Pumpkins (Yellow, Red, Green)

The complete set of three cast resin and ceramic multiples
Medium: Cast resin and ceramic painted in color
Year: 1998
Size: 8.3 x 8.9 x 8.9 cm (3 1/4 x 3 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches)
Edition: 30

Signed and numbered in black ink on the underside
Further signed, titled and numbered in black ink on the wooden boxes

This trio of sculptural pumpkins by Yayoi Kusama from 1998 features her signature polka-dot motif, realized in vibrant red, yellow, and green hues. Each pumpkin’s bulbous form is textured with uniform circular indentations, creating a rhythmic interplay of light and shadow across their surfaces. Displayed on the original ceramic tile bases, the sculptures draw viewers into Kusama’s boundless imaginative world, where these humble pumpkins become vessels of her lifelong fascination and obsession.

“It seems pumpkins do not inspire much respect, but I was enchanted by their charming and winsome form. What appealed to me most was the pumpkin’s generous unpretentiousness.”

Kusama’s affinity with the misshapen gourd is rooted deeply in the artist’s biography and is closely tied to the patterns of infinite repetition and accumulation that best define her practice. Growing up on her family’s seed farm in Matsumoto, Kusama was surrounded by the natural world, an environment that directly informed the severe auditory and visual hallucinations that the artist first began to suffer as a child. However, where her recollections of other animated plants and accumulating talking flowers take on more terrifying dimensions that the artist would compulsively return to in her phallic soft sculpture installations, Infinity Nets, and mirrored environments, the pumpkin provided an altogether more comforting vision. As the artist recalls, “The first time I ever saw a pumpkin was when I was in elementary school and went with my grandfather to visit a big seed-harvesting ground […] and there it was: a pumpkin the size of a man’s head […] it immediately began speaking to me in a most animated manner […] It seems that pumpkins do not inspire much respect. But I was enchanted by their charming and winsome form.” Since then, the artist has gone to lengths to describe the joy and comfort that the humble and humorously shaped squash has provided over the years, and her work continues to celebrate them and the unassuming joie de vivre that they embody.

“Pumpkins have been a great comfort to me since my childhood. They speak to me of the joy of living. They are humble and amusing at the same time, and I have and always will celebrate them in my art.”

Among the earliest subjects treated by the burgeoning artist, Kusama’s first depictions of pumpkins date from the 1940s, following her training at the Kyoto City Senior High School of Art in the traditional Nihonga style of painting. Kusama would later describe the meditative effect of this practice, repeatedly returning to the kabocha and capturing their unique charm in a manner that anticipates the compulsive repetitiousness of her later Infinity Nets and mirrored environments. Tellingly, the pumpkins made their presence felt in these performances too, forming an integral part of the presentation Mirror Room (Pumpkin) in the Japanese pavilion of the 1993 iteration of La Biennale di Venezia, where the artist, costumed in polka dots, dispensed smaller handheld pumpkins to visitors. The room – like the pumpkins and the artist herself – was covered in black polka dots, recalling her Happenings in 1960s New York and their emphasis on modes of “self-obliteration”.

Pumpkin (Yellow)

SBI Art Auction: 26 October 2025
Estimated: JPY 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
JPY 2,530,000 / USD 16,590

YAYOI KUSAMA
Yellow Pumpkin, 1998
Resin with original box
Signed and numbered on the bottom
Signed, titled and numbered on the box
From the edition of 30

Pumpkin (Green)

Pumpkin (Red)

LA Modern: 8 September 2022
Estimated: USD 10,000 – 15,000
USD 33,800

YAYOI KUSAMA (b.1929)
Red Pumpkin, 1998
Painted resin, wood box, ceramic tile, paper box
Signed and numbered to underside of work ‘Yayoi Kusama 7/30’
Printed title in Japanese ‘Red Pumpkin’
Signed and numbered to wood box ‘Yayoi Kusama 7/30’
Sold with original wood box, display plate and paper box

Ravenel Taiwan: 2 December 2018
Estimated: TWD 900,000 – 1,200,000
TWD 1,920,000 / USD 62,275

Pumpkins (Yellow, Red, Green) (a set of 3)

Yayoi KUSAMA (Japanese, 1929)

Signed on the bottom YAYOI KUSAMA in English, numbered 5/30 (each)
Signed in box YAYOI KUSAMA in English and titled Yellow Pumpkin in Japanese, numbered 5/30
Signed in box YAYOI KUSAMA in English and titled Red Pumpkin in Japanese, numbered 5/30
Signed in box YAYOI KUSAMA in English and titled Green Pumpkin in Japanese, numbered 5/30