Famous Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama, pictured in her studio in Tokyo.
Yayoi Kusama is a prolific and eccentric Japanese artist who has been making art since childhood, often inspired by the hallucinations she has experienced most of her life. Now a nonagenarian, she shows no signs of slowing down, and she is often considered as the most successful female artist alive today.
Kusama primarily creates sculptures and installation art, but she has also experimented with numerous other mediums, including painting, printmaking, video, fashion, writing, and performance art. Prints dominate her market, accounting for 45% of her work sold at auction, and they usually reach between £10,000 and £50,000.
Below is a list of Yayoi Kusama’s six most expensive prints sold at auction. If you own a Yayoi Kusama print and would like to know more about how much it might be worth, or how to sell it, get in touch with Mark Littler today.
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Amour Pour Toujours
This set of 10 screenprints in colours with glitter dates from 2000. It is accompanied by the original portfolio’s poem by French poet, Alain Jouffroy, and it was sold by Phillips in October 2021 for £268,137, more than £85,000 above its top estimate. Translating as ‘Love Forever’, Amour Pour Toujours is a vibrant series of prints bringing together some of Kusama’s most common motifs, including the pumpkin, which has been a staple in her work for decades.
Amour Pour Toujours sold by Phillips in 2021
Mt. Fuji In Seven Colours
Mount Fuji is one of Japan’s Three Holy Mountains, and it holds special religious, cultural, and historical significance to the nation. It has provided countless creatives with inspiration over the centuries, and in 2015, Yayoi Kusama joined their ranks with this series of seven prints.
Produced as woodcuts in the tradition of ukiyo-e, Kusama brought her own unique, modern twist to the prints by including polka dots, one of her most famous and frequently-used patterns. The prints exceeded their top estimate by more than £35,000 when they were sold by SBI Art Auction in November 2019 for £228,512.
Mt. Fuji in Seven Colours sold by SBI Art Auction in 2019
Waves (TWXZO)
This silkscreen on canvas from 2007 was sold by Christie’s in October 2022 for £171,160, nearly £35,000 above its top estimate. The repeating, abstract patterns of the print are typical of Kusama, and they’re often inspired by the hallucinations she’s experienced since the age of 10, which she describes as “flashes of light, auras, or dense fields of dots.”
Naturally, when they first started happening, Kusama found these episodes disturbing and unsettling, and her way of coping was to turn to art. She would draw what she saw in her sketchbook, and she believes “recording them helped to ease the shock and fear of the episodes”, stating, “that is the origin of my pictures.”
Waves (TWXZO) sold by Christies in 2022
Waves At Daybreak
This silkscreen on canvas from 2006 more than doubled its estimate when it was sold by Christie’s in March 2022 for £160,000. The monochromatic print depicts an undulating mesh of lines, dots, and repeating shapes, perhaps an attempt to show what Kusama sees when she describes being “tormented by a thin, silk-like curtain of indeterminate grey that [falls] between me and my surroundings.”
Waves at Daybreak sold by Christie’s in 2022
Pumpkin-Black
Pumpkins are one of Kusama’s best-known and most loved motifs. The artist was born in the mountainous Japanese region of Matsumoto to a family that made their living cultivating plant seeds. Though she had a difficult and traumatic childhood, Kusama’s surroundings and early experiences have provided her with inspiration for her artwork throughout her life; it was in this environment that she first saw a pumpkin, which, she says, “immediately began speaking to me in a most animated manner.”
Her anthropomorphisation of the vegetable has continued since then, with Kusama stating: “I love pumpkins because of their humorous form, warm feeling, and human-like quality.” This print from 2006 shows how her obsession has continued, and it was sold by New Art Est-Ouest Auctions in November 2021 for £123,215, more than £25,000 above its top estimate.
Pumpkin Black sold by New Art Est-Ouest Auctions in 2021
A Dream I Dreamed Yesterday
This monochrome silkscreen from 2006 was sold by Sotheby’s in March 2023 for £120,000. It features an intricate mixture of repeating patterns and polka dots that almost oscillate with movement, illustrating Kusama’s belief that “Polka dots can’t stay alone” because “With just one polka dot, nothing can be achieved”, yet “Two and three and more polka dots become movement.”
Polka dots have been important to Kusama all her life; they appeared in some of her earliest pieces of work, and she has been known to cover surfaces such as walls and floors, household objects, and even animals and people in them. Some of the bizarre happenings she organised in New York in the 1960s involved the artist painting polka dots onto the naked bodies of participants; to Kusama, “Our earth is only one polka dot among the million stars in the cosmos. Polka dots are a way to infinity.”
A Dream I Dreamed Yesterday sold by Sotheby’s in 2023
