Image: Vogtle Contemporary
The Geneva gallery Vogtle Contemporary has published a tribute to Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese artist whose death was announced by her studio on 27 August. According to that announcement, Kusama died at a hospital in Tokyo on 14 August 2026, aged 97.
In its message, issued on 22 September, the gallery described Kusama as an avant-garde pioneer and pointed to the lasting mark left by her bold patterns and independent spirit.
The gallery’s own biography of the artist records that Kusama was born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan. From an early age she experienced visual and auditory hallucinations and began making pictures built from nets and polka dots, motifs that remained central to her work. Her reputation grew internationally in the late 1980s following a series of solo exhibitions abroad, and in 1993 she represented Japan at the 45th Venice Biennale.
The same biography describes a career that extended well beyond painting. Kusama worked in performance, room-sized installations, outdoor sculpture, writing, film, fashion and design, and created interventions within existing buildings.
Alongside its tribute, the gallery presented an online selection of her editions. It includes two screenprints from 1989, “Dawn” and “Snail”, each from an edition of 100 and numbered, titled, dated and signed by the artist; the gallery lists them as numbers 120 and 127 in the catalogue raisonné. The selection also features a 2022 work, “Tsumari in Bloom”, printed on polyester, together with pumpkin editions and a scarf.
Founded in 2010, Vogtle Contemporary is based in Geneva and focuses on internationally established contemporary artists.
