Red-Nets No. 2.A.3., 1960
Oil on canvas
71.1×55.9 cm (28.2×22 inches)
Signed and titled in English and dated 1960 on the reverse

 

Provenance
Private Collection, New York (acquired directly from the artist circa 1965)
Private Collection, New York (thence by descent to the owner from the above)
Sotheby’s, New York, 10 May 2011, lot 57
Acquired by the present owner from the above sale

 

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 31 March 2018
HKD 35,587,500 / USD 4,534,132

Source: Sotheby’s
(#1075) KUSAMA YAYOI | Red-Nets No. 2.A.3. (sothebys.com)

 

Intricately complex and exquisite, manifesting elusive undulating allusions to a delicate red rosebud, Red-Nets No. 2.A.3 is a rare and entrancing early example of Kusama Yayoi’s Infinity Nets – one that harkens back simultaneously to the artist’s well-documented childhood hallucination of red flowers as well as her Japanese Nihonga paintings from the 1940s and 1950s. The painting was executed in 1960, Kusama’s third year in New York city and the first in which she rendered her iconic Infinity Nets in red. Characterized by a rippling arrangement of dexterously swirling arcs, unlike other all-over abstract Infinity Nets the present work is unique in its subtly figurative impression of a rosebud woven into the net – a highly personalized expression of Kusama’s desire to “lend specificity to infinity of space” (Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, London, 2013, p. 23). Examples from the esteemed handful of early Infinity Nets executed in 1959 and 1960 are held in renowned museum collections such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among other pre-eminent institutions. A striking testament to the alluring and disorienting spatial complexity that has defined Kusama’s work for decades, Red-Nets 2.A.3 offers a treasured glimpse of the conceptual and creative origins of one of the most iconic figures of contemporary art.

At once pensive and electrically enthralling, meditative yet intensely alluring, Red-Nets 2.A.3 is also a stirring evocation of the intense passion, hardship, and remarkable creative vision which marked the first years of the artist’s practice in the United States. When Kusama first landed in New York in June of 1958, knowing no one and speaking little English, she discovered that, “New York was in every way a fierce and violent place” (Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, London, 2013, p. 17). Despite her trepidations, Kusama found herself deeply inspired by the urban motion and energy of the city, remarking, “In the bustle of a competitive and hectic New York, at the bottom of light and shadow of a contemporary civilization that moves forward with creaking noises, in the midst of this metropolis which symbolizes American pragmatism […] This is a form of my resistance…This infinitely repeatable rhythm and monochrome surface constitute a new painting, through an unusual ‘light’…