Untitled, 1970
Acrylic on board
78.3×82.3 cm (30.9×32.4 inches)
Signed and dated ‘YAYOI KUSAMA 1970’ (on the reverse)

 

Provenance
Jan Maarten Reinink Collection (acquired directly from the artist)
Thence by descent to the present owner.

 

Christie’s London: 7 March 2017
GBP 509,000 / USD 618,469

Source: Christie’s
Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929) (christies.com)

 

 

As an all-over pattern of golden yellow dots unfurls against a white background, subtle suggestions of form and motion seem to swell and recede across the board like hallucinations: Untitled is a dizzying journey into the infinite. Painted in 1970 at the estate of Dr Maarten Reinink while he was treating the artist and given afterwards to the psychiatrist, the painting comes with the pallet and paintbrush used by Kusama on the reverse, it is a vivid, fantastical example of Yayoi Kusama’s career-defining ‘infinity net’ paintings. The bright airiness of its gauzy pattern of dots offset against the brilliant burnished gold of the canvas, the work alchemizes a feeling of both lightness and weight, but it is also underpinned by an emotional intensity contained within the artist’s obsessive, individualized markings. A feat of remarkable stamina and focus, Kusama labors for hours, meticulously repeating, though not replicating, each dot in order to create the net’s rippling effect; working inches from the work’s surface, the process of painting becomes an all-consuming, almost spiritual experience, the world distilled to one simple form.