Three Pumpkins

Medium: Screenprint in colors on Verin d’Arches paper
[2 screens, 2 colors, 3 runs]
Year: 1993
Image: 24.2 x 33 cm (9.5 x 13 inches)
Sheet: 33.5 x 43 cm (13.2 x 16.9 inches)
Edition: 160
Artist’s Proofs: 16 AP
Printer’s Proofs: 5 PP
Printer: Okabe Tokuzo, Tokyo
Literature: ABE 186
Yayoi Kusama Prints 1979-2017, ABE PUBLISHING LTD, Number 186, Illustrated page 114

Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil on lower edge

 

“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.”

Undoubtedly one of the most iconic motifs of contemporary art and of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s incredible 70-year career, the polka-dot covered pumpkin combines the artist’s compulsive focus on infinity and repetition with a highly personal and self-reflective dimension. Suspended amongst a crackled backdrop in their original cadmium coloring, Kusama deploys her army of loyal dots in strict formation to form three of her favorite motifs: the pumpkin. Kusama’s dots variate in size, both bold and minute, shrinking into oblivion to create the illusion of curvature as the negative space of the recesses reflect the undulating segments on the pumpkin’s stout body. Kusama’s bright and brilliantly patterned gourds are so closely connected to the artist’s identity that they function as both allegory and mode of self-representation, acting as a universal signature of the artist.

“I adore pumpkins… Pumpkins talk to me, giving off an aura of my sacred mental state. They embody a base for the joy of living shared by all humankind on earth. It is for the pumpkins that I keep on going.”

Kusama began to sketch pumpkins in the wake of her first hallucinatory episode, and at the age of 17 she made her public pumpkin debut with Kabocha, a Nihonga-style painting made in accordance with Japanese artistic conventions, tools, materials and style, which she presented at a travelling exhibition in the towns of Nagano and Matsumoto, Japan. After these inceptive artistic attempts, the pumpkin motif disappeared from her oeuvre for decades, to then resurge in the 1970s and 1980s, following a period in which the artist focused on performance art. Pumpkins would take hold of her artistic practice, becoming an obsessive fascination for Kusama owing to her deeply personal relationship with the motif. This interest was compounded in the 1990s, when the image was included in the artist’s interactive installations known as Infinity Mirror Rooms.

 

 

 

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Auction Results

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SBI Art Auction: 25 October 2025
Estimated: JPY 3,000,000 – 6,000,000
JPY 6,900,000 / USD 45,150

YAYOI KUSAMA
Three Pumpkins (Kusama 186), 1993
Screenprint
Signed, titled, dated and numbered
From the edition of 160
Printed by Okabe Tokuzo

Mainichi Auction Tokyo: 19 July 2025
Estimated: JPY 4,000,000 – 6,000,000
JPY 6,900,000 / USD 46,370

YAYOI KUSAMA
Three Pumpkins (ABE 186), 1993
Screenprint
Signed, dated and numbered
From the edition of 160

Phillips London: 19 September 2024
Estimated: GBP 30,000 – 50,000
GBP 40,640 / USD 53,950

Sotheby’s London: 15 March 2023
Estimated: GBP 26,000 – 35,000
GBP 57,150 / USD 68,764

YAYOI KUSAMA
Three Pumpkins, 1993
Screen-print in colours
Signed in pencil, dated, titled in Japanese, inscribed ‘A.P.’
One of 16 artist’s proof aside from the numbered edition of 160

SBI Art Auction: 16 July 2022
Estimated: JPY 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
JPY 8,855,000 / USD 63,931

YAYOI KUSAMA
Three Pumpkins (Kusama 186), 1993
Screenprint
Signed, titled, dated and numbered
From the edition of 160

Phillips London: 15 June 2022
Estimated: GBP 20,000 – 30,000
GBP 44,100 / USD 53,094

YAYOI KUSAMA
Three Pumpkins (K. 186), 1993
Screen-print in colors, on Arches paper (deckled on two sides)
Signed, titled in Japanese, dated and numbered 126/160 in pencil