The Fondation Beyeler in Riehen is presenting Switzerland's first comprehensive retrospective of Yayoi Kusama's work, showcasing approximately 300 pieces spanning seven decades of the 96-year-old artist's prolific career. The exhibition reveals that Kusama's artistic legacy extends far beyond her famous polka dots and Instagram-friendly installations, offering visitors a deep dive into the complex universe of one of the world's most beloved contemporary artists.
Curator Mouna Mekour has organized the exhibition chronologically, beginning with a drawing by 10-year-old Yayoi Kusama that depicts her mother with closed eyes and dots covering her entire face. This early work foreshadows the hallucinations of dots and nets that would define Kusama's entire artistic vocabulary. Rather than simply placing the famous yellow pumpkin sculptures in the foyer for social media appeal, the exhibition thoughtfully traces the immense breadth of Kusama's creative output.
Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan, to parents who owned a seed company, Kusama's childhood was marked by the trauma of World War II. At age 13, she was forced to work in a parachute factory. Even as a child, she experienced hallucinations of dots and nets, fearing she would dissolve into them. She later described these dots as representing the moon, the sun, the earth, symbols of infinity, and bodies existing in relation to one another - elements that could never stand alone.
Kusama began studying at an art school in Kyoto, where she learned classical Japanese techniques like calligraphy while teaching herself oil painting. The conservative environment quickly felt restrictive for the young woman interested in both figurative and abstract expression. Her first self-portrait from 1950 shows her as a pink-violet sunflower with a slightly smiling mouth floating beneath - a visualization of introspection that would permeate her entire body of work.
1950s Japan offered little opportunity for women, who were expected primarily to be good housewives. To escape this conservative constraint, Kusama boarded a plane in 1957, crossed the Pacific, and landed in New York after being encouraged by a letter from painter Georgia O'Keeffe. Inspired by her observations from thousands of feet above, she began painting coarse dots on large-format canvases - first on white backgrounds, later on black with red, yellow, and green. These Net Paintings are now among her most famous works.
The darkness that existed both in her mind and in the external world is visible in her early career works. Drawings with titles like "Screaming Girl" hang alongside "Atomic Bomb," while her Corpses series depicts writhing, intestinal forms in dark red-brown. These works processed her trauma from the war and the oppressive atmosphere of her homeland.
The net serves not only as a recurring motif but also as a metaphor for Kusama's entire oeuvre - like a net, all her works and ideas are interconnected. Some connections are obvious, like the constantly appearing dots, others become apparent on second glance, and still others require careful observation. For example, Kusama's relationship with the written word runs throughout her career. Most of her work titles read like small poems, and understanding them provides better insight into her art. The artist has also written longer texts, including over ten novels, and continues to incorporate poetry and word fragments in English and Japanese into her colorful paintings even at age 96.
Fashion has been another constant thread through Kusama's life. As a teenager in Japan, she sewed her own clothes, later creating sculptures from dresses, shoes, and everyday objects, transforming fashion into art. In the 1960s, she founded her own fashion label, Kusama Fashion Company. Although commercial success eluded her, her fascination with fashion remained. When she collaborated with luxury brand Louis Vuitton in 2023, critics decried it as commercial selling out, but it was actually a logical consequence - fashion and art were never separate disciplines for Kusama.
For the Japanese artist, art encompasses a vast field. Besides painting, drawing, collaging, writing, and clothing design, Kusama has created video works, live performances, and political actions. After returning to Japan in the mid-1970s, she also devoted herself to pottery. Since 1977, Kusama has voluntarily lived in a psychiatric facility, with her studio and archive located just steps away. All of this development and her ability to reinvent herself - such as when she returned to Japan without money - can be traced through the Fondation Beyeler exhibition.
Many works come directly from Kusama's studio, with some pieces (like her etchings from the 1950s) never before shown, and others (like the Infinity Room with daylight in the garden) rarely displayed. The exhibition features several premieres in Riehen, including the first time Kusama has displayed a mirrored cube inside and outside in an immersive Yellow Tree room.
In the museum's basement, giant room-filling tentacles in yellow-black stretch upward from the black-and-yellow dotted floor, hanging from the ceiling and snaking around the mirrored Infinity Room. This immersive experience - where visitors enter and become part of the artwork - is impressive today, but imagine how groundbreaking it must have been in the 1960s when Kusama was among the first artists to conceive art as an immersive experience.
While some critics dismiss Kusama's work as decorative and perfectly suited for social media's vertical format, this accessibility has made her one of the world's most popular artists. Her exhibitions typically draw hours-long queues, which is why the Infinity Rooms in Riehen can only be visited for a maximum of 45 seconds and opening hours have been extended.
Kusama is also criticized for repetition, but curator Mouna Mekour explains that this repetition is an important part of her artistic vocabulary, along with the concept of accumulation, the idea of infinity, the relationship to the universe, and the dots. "All of this is not just part of her practice, but how she lives and moves as a person in this world," says Mekour, who developed the exhibition closely with Kusama's longtime studio staff.
With this vocabulary, Yayoi Kusama has continually reinvented herself over the past seven decades, ultimately becoming a total work of art. The exhibition begins with dozens of silver balls in the pond in front of the Foundation (Narcissus Garden, which brought Kusama international recognition in 1966), continues with the sheer number of works and huge, densely hung paintings from the Eternal Soul series, and culminates with the Infinity Rooms. Kusama deliberately creates this overwhelming feeling, making visitors feel absorbed and part of her universe.
The retrospective "Yayoi Kusama" runs at the Fondation Beyeler from October 12, 2025, through January 25, 2026, offering visitors an unprecedented opportunity to experience the full scope of an artist whose influence on contemporary art extends far beyond her iconic polka dots and pumpkins.
