Infinity-Nets (FCPR), 2007
Acrylic on canvas
162×130.5 cm (63.7×51.4 inches)
Signed twice, titled and dated 2007 on the reverse

 

Provenance
Galerie Piéce Unique, Paris
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2007

 

Sotheby’s London: 8 March 2017
GBP 818,750 / USD 994,835

Source: Sotheby’s
(#21) Yayoi Kusama (sothebys.com)

 

Executed in 2007, Infinity Nets (FCPR) relates back to the incipient Nets created during the 1960s in its palette of red over a white monochrome ground. Where the very first nets created in the late 1950s consisted exclusively of viscous glots of white oil painted over a black ground and bathed in a thin whitewash, red announced Kusama’s first foray into color.

Having since painted her Nets in a kaleidoscopic array of chromatic combinations, it is the combination of white, red, and black that most immediately communicates the primal psychological and corporeal bent of her monochrome production. Indeed, while Kusama’s work deserves its place within the prevailing abstract movements of the post-war period – from Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism in New York to ZERO and Nul in Europe, hers is a creative practice compelled by a distinctly personal pathology: a psychical condition experienced as an enveloping hallucinatory veil of grisaille and red dots.