Flower

1950s

Letters to Georgia O’Keeffe decide her fate

The chief artistic impression of Kusama’s youth was a book of reproductions of Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings; she tracked down the artist’s address and wrote to her, a correspondence began, and as a result Yayoi decided to leave for the United States. As she recalled, her mother threw an envelope with a million yen in her face, telling her never to cross the threshold of the house again.

1952

First exhibition in Japan

By 1950 Kusama was painting abstract natural forms in watercolour, gouache and oil, mostly on paper; her first show in Japan took place in 1952, and in the 1950s several more solo exhibitions of her paintings followed in Matsumoto and Tokyo.

1957

Leaves for the United States: Seattle

Kusama knew little English and had hardly any contacts in America, but she was set on never returning to Japan; she brought two hundred drawings and destroyed the rest of her works, which held memories of her past life. In 1957 she went to Seattle, where she held a modest exhibition at the Zoe Dusanne Gallery.

1958

New York: an apartment without heating

A year later, following O’Keeffe’s advice, Kusama came to New York, where it was almost impossible for a woman, and an Asian one at that, to break through: she rented an unheated apartment, could barely afford paint and in the cold sometimes got up at night to draw so as not to freeze. Once she carried a painting taller than herself through forty blocks of Manhattan, offering it to the Whitney Museum, and was turned down.

1959

First solo exhibition in New York

In 1959 Kusama held her first solo exhibition in New York at the Brata Gallery, an artists’ co-op, showing a series of white net paintings; Donald Judd reviewed them enthusiastically, and he and Frank Stella each acquired a painting.

1962

The only woman in the “Nul” exhibition

In 1962 Kusama was the only woman among the participants of the international group exhibition “Nul” (“Zero”) at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, alongside Lucio Fontana and Otto Piene.