Without doubt one of the most immediately recognizable motifs in contemporary art, the polka-dot covered pumpkin sits at the very heart of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s incredible 70-year practice, appearing across her work in paintings, sculpture, and immersive installations. Profoundly personal, 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. So deeply enmeshed with Kusama’s biography and practice, the pumpkin is utterly synonymous with the artist herself, employed both as a universally recognized signature and a richly rewarding mode of self-representation that is most readily evoked in the freestanding sculptures.

Kusama first started rendering large-scale pumpkins in fiberglass in the 1990s, but it is with her bronze sculptures and their stunningly reflective bronze pieces that Kusama approaches the immersive, interactive experiences of her mirrored environments. Examples of Kusama’s monumental open-air pumpkin sculptures continue to move and enchant viewers, as was seen most famously in the international reaction to the typhoon damage sustained by the first and most beloved of these pieces, originally installed at the Benesse Art Site on Naoshima Island.

Most recently, Kusama unveiled her tallest bronze sculpture to date this year, the 6-metre-high Pumpkin now permanently installed in Kensington Gardens, London.  Following the ungainly curves and swollen form of the gourd itself, Kusama’s idiosyncratic polka-dot design flows in waves across its pronounced contours, recalling the bold, graphic qualities of Pop’s serial approach to everyday consumer items as well as the sophisticated geometries and emphasis on pattern and visual sensation explored in Op Art. Working with this yielding organic form, Kusama moves beyond naturalistic representation, animating each of these three-dimensional pieces with a vitality and personality all of their own.

 

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Top Lots

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#1. Pumpkin (L), 2014

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 April 2023
Estimated: HKD 40,000,000 – 60,000,000
HKD 62,638,000 / USD 7,979,465

Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 | Pumpkin (L) 南瓜（L） | 50th Anniversary Contemporary Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin (L), 2014
Bronze
241 x 235 x 235 cm (94 7/8 x 92 1/2 x 92 1/2 inches)
Incised Yayoi Kusama
This work is number 8 from an edition of 8, plus 2 artist’s proofs

#2. PUMPKIN, 2017

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 1 December 2021
Estimated: HKD 28,000,000 – 38,000,000
HKD 55,450,000 / USD 7,114,766

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929) (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
PUMPKIN, 2017
Fiberglass-reinforced plastic and urethane paint sculpture in two parts
215 (H) x 180 x 180 cm (84 5/8 x 70 7/8 x 70 7/8 inches)
Signed and dated ‘YAYOI KUSAMA 2017’ (on the side)

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USD 7 million

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#3. Pumpkin, 2022

Christie’s New-York: 21 November 2024
Estimated: USD 6,000,000 – 8,000,000
USD 6,826,000

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Pumpkin | Christie’s

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Pumpkin, 2022
Fiberglass reinforced plastic and urethane paint, in three parts
245x260x260 cm (96 1/2 x 102 x 102 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Yayoi Kusama 2022’ (on the side)

#4. Pumpkin (M), 2014

Sotheby’s New-York: 16 November 2022
Estimated: USD 3,500,000 – 7,500,000
USD 6,529,100

Pumpkin (M) | The Now Evening Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin (M), 2014
Bronze
187x182x182 cm (73 ⅝ x 71 ⅝ x 71 ⅝ inches)
Incised Yayoi Kusama
The present work is number 8 from an edition of 8

#5. Pumpkin, 2013

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 28 May 2024
Estimated: HKD 40,000,000 – 60,000,000
HKD 48,775,000 / USD 6,244,399

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Pumpkin | Christie’s (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Pumpkin, 2013
Urethane on Fiber Reinforced Plastics, sculpture
205 (H) x 210 x 210 cm (80 3/4 x 82 5/8 x 82 5/8 inches)
Signed and dated ‘YAYOI KUSAMA 2013’ (on the side)

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USD 6 million

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#6. Pumpkin, 2010

Ravenel Taiwan: 5 December 2021
Estimated: TWD 40,000,000 – 60,000,000
TWD 141,440,000 / USD 5,102,453

Ravenel | Yayoi KUSAMA《Pumpkin》 Ravenel Autumn Auction 2021 Taipei Lot 226

YAYOI KUSAMA
Pumpkin, 2010
Urethane paint on fiberglass reinforced plastic
120(L) x 120(W) x 125(H) cm
Signed Yayoi Kusama in English and dated 2010

#7. Starry Pumpkin Gold, 2014

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 25 May 2022
Estimated: HKD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
HKD 40,050,000 / USD 5,101,976

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929) (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA
Starry Pumpkin Gold, 2014
Fiberglass-reinforced plastic and tile sculpture
185 (H) x 214 x 214 cm (72.9 x 84.2 x 84.2 inches)

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USD 5 million

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#8. Pumpkin, 2019

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 April 2024
Estimated: HKD 28,000,000 – 38,000,000
HKD 36,145,000 / USD 4,620,941

Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 | Pumpkin 南瓜 | Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin, 2019
Urethane on fiberglass reinforced plastic
120x138x138 cm (47 1/4 x 54 3/8 x 54 3/8 inches)
Signed and dated 2019

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USD 4 million

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#9. Pumpkin (S), 2014

Sotheby’s London: 12 October 2023
Estimated: GBP 2,400,000 – 4,000,000
GBP 3,073,000 / USD 3,752,595

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin (S), 2014
Bronze
108x114x114 cm (42 1/2 x 44 7/8 x 44 7/8 inches)
Incised with the artist’s signature (near the base)
This work is number 1 from an edition of 8 plus 2 artist’s proofs

#10. Pumpkin, 2009

Christie’s London: 30 June 2021
Estimated: GBP 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
GBP 2,662,500 / USD 3,675,963

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Pumpkin | Christie’s (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Pumpkin, 2009
Painted fiberglass reinforced plastic
122x129x129 cm (48 x 50 3/4 x 50 3/4 inches)
Signed and dated ‘YAYOI KUSAMA 2009’ (on the side)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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2025 Auction Results

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#1. Starry Pumpkin, 2019

#2. Pumpkin (S), 2016

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 28 March 2025
Estimated: HKD 12,500,000 – 18,500,000
HKD 13,685,000 / USD 1,759,000

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Pumpkin (S) | Christie’s

#3. Reach Up to the Universe, Dotted Pumpkin (Vermilion), 2010

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 26 September 2025
Estimated: HKD 9,000,000 – 15,000,000
HKD 12,065,000 / USD 1,550,770

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Reach Up to the Universe, Dotted Pumpkin (Vermilion) | Christie’s

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Reach Up to the Universe, Dotted Pumpkin (Vermilion), 2010
Painted aluminum sculpture
200 (H) x 150 x 150 cm (78  3/4 x 59 x 59 inches)
Signed ‘Yayoi Kusama’ (on the side)
Incised ‘PA005 2010⁄8’ (on the bottom)

#4. Pumpkin, 2019

Property from a Prestigious Private Collector
Sotheby’s New-York: 19 November 2025
Estimated: USD 1,700,000 – 2,500,000
USD 1,514,000

Pumpkin | Contemporary Day Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin, 2019
Fiberglass reinforced plastic, stainless steel, urethane paint and mirror
94 x 118.1 x 120.7 cm (37 x 46 1/2 x 47 1/2 inches)
Signed and dated 2019 (on the lower edge)

#5. Pumpkin, 1999

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 28 September 2025
Estimated: HKD 2,400,000 – 3,200,000
HKD 3,556,000 / USD 457,070

Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 | Pumpkin 南瓜 | Modern & Contemporary Day Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin, 1999
Acrylic on canvas laid on wood, mixed media
25 x 22.6 x 20.1 cm (9 7/8 x 8 7/8 x 7 7/8 inches)
Signed, titled in Japanese and dated 1999 (on the underside)

 

 

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2024 Auction Results

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#1. Pumpkin, 2022

Christie’s New-York: 21 November 2024
Estimated: USD 6,000,000 – 8,000,000
USD 6,826,000

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Pumpkin | Christie’s

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Pumpkin, 2022
Fiberglass reinforced plastic and urethane paint, in three parts
245x260x260 cm (96 1/2 x 102 x 102 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Yayoi Kusama 2022’ (on the side)

#2. Pumpkin, 2013

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 28 May 2024
Estimated: HKD 40,000,000 – 60,000,000
HKD 48,775,000 / USD 6,244,399

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Pumpkin | Christie’s (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Pumpkin, 2013
Urethane on Fiber Reinforced Plastics, sculpture
205 (H) x 210 x 210 cm (80 3/4 x 82 5/8 x 82 5/8 inches)
Signed and dated ‘YAYOI KUSAMA 2013’ (on the side)

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USD 5 million

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#3. Pumpkin, 2019

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 April 2024
Estimated: HKD 28,000,000 – 38,000,000
HKD 36,145,000 / USD 4,620,941

Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 | Pumpkin 南瓜 | Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin, 2019
Urethane on fiberglass reinforced plastic
120x138x138 cm (47 1/4 x 54 3/8 x 54 3/8 inches)
Signed and dated 2019

#4. Pumpkin, 2016

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 April 2024
Estimated: HKD 24,000,000 – 34,000,000
HKD 24,045,000 / USD 3,074,022

Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 | Pumpkin 南瓜 | Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin, 2016
Tiles on FRP, glue and steel
230x230x35 cm (90 1/2 x 90 1/2 x 13 3/4 inches)
Signed, titled and dated 2016 on the reverse

#6. Starry Pumpkin, 2016

Sotheby’s New-York: 20 November 2024
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 2,340,000

Starry Pumpkin | The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Starry Pumpkin, 2016
Fiberglass reinforced plastic and tile
146.1 x 142.2 x 134.6 cm (57 1/2 x 56 x  53 inches)
Signed, titled and dated 2016 (on a label affixed to the interior)

#7. Pumpkins, 1982

SBI Art Auction: 12 April 2024
Estimated: JPY 60,000,000 – 120,000,000
JPY 189,750,000 / USD 1,238,690

https://www.sbiartauction.co.jp/en/results/detail/122/330

YAYOI KUSAMA
Pumpkins, 1982
Mixed media (acrylic, fabric, paper, clay and wood)
57.5 x 30.3 x 26.3 cm (22 5/8 x 11 7/8 x 10 3/8 inches)

 

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USD 1 million

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#8. Pumpkins Self-obliteration, 1992

SBI Art Auction: 26 October 2024
Estimated: JPY 80,000,000 – 140,000,000
JPY 112,700,000 / USD 742,033

RESULTS｜SBI Art Auction

YAYOI KUSAMA
Pumpkins Self-obliteration, 1992
Mixed media (acrylic, fabric, paper, styrofoam and wood)
50.8 × 20.3 × 18 cm (20 × 8 × 7 1/8 inches)
Signed, titled and dated on the bottom

#9. Pumpkin, 1999

Seoul Auction: 24 April 2024
Estimated: KRW 200,000,000 – 300,000,000
KRW 236,000,000 / USD 171,100

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Pumpkin, 1999
Mixed media
13.2 x 8.2 cm (5 1/8 x 3 1/8 inches)
Signed, titled, titled and dated (on the underside)

#10. Untitled, 1985

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 2 April 2024
Estimated: HKD 500,000 – 700,000
HKD 1,071,000 / USD 136,860

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Untitled | Christie’s

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Untitled, 1985
Mixed media sculpture
10.5 (H) x 9.5 x 9.5 cm (4 1/8 x 3 3/4 x 3 3/4 inches)

 

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2023 Auction Results

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#1. Pumpkin (L), 2014

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 April 2023
Estimated: HKD 40,000,000 – 60,000,000
HKD 62,638,000 / USD 7,979,465

Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 | Pumpkin (L) 南瓜（L） | 50th Anniversary Contemporary Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin (L), 2014
Bronze
241 x 235 x 235 cm (94 7/8 x 92 1/2 x 92 1/2 inches)
Incised Yayoi Kusama
This work is number 8 from an edition of 8, plus 2 artist’s proofs

#2. Pumpkin (S), 2014

Sotheby’s London: 12 October 2023
Estimated: GBP 2,400,000 – 4,000,000
GBP 3,073,000 / USD 3,752,595

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin (S), 2014
Bronze
108x114x114 cm (42 1/2 x 44 7/8 x 44 7/8 inches)
Incised with the artist’s signature (near the base)
This work is number 1 from an edition of 8 plus 2 artist’s proofs

#4. Pumpkin, 1991

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 6 April 2023
Estimated: HKD 650,000 – 950,000
HKD 2,286,000 / USD 291,206

Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 | Pumpkin 南瓜 | Contemporary Day Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin, 1991
Acrylic on ceramic
10.3 x 12 x 10 cm (4 x 4 3/4 x 4 inches)
Signed, titled in Japanese and dated 1991 on the underside

2022 Auction Results

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#1. Pumpkin (M), 2014

Sotheby’s New-York: 16 November 2022
Estimated: USD 3,500,000 – 7,500,000
USD 6,529,100

Pumpkin (M) | The Now Evening Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin (M), 2014
Bronze
187x182x182 cm (73 ⅝ x 71 ⅝ x 71 ⅝ inches)
Incised Yayoi Kusama
The present work is number 8 from an edition of 8

#2. Starry Pumpkin Gold, 2014

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 25 May 2022
Estimated: HKD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
HKD 40,050,000 / USD 5,101,976

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929) (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA
Starry Pumpkin Gold, 2014
Fiberglass-reinforced plastic and tile sculpture
185 (H) x 214 x 214 cm (72.9 x 84.2 x 84.2 inches)

#3. Untitled (Pumpkin sculpture), 2007

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 7 October 2022
Estimated: HKD 32,000,000 – 45,000,000
HKD 27,479,000 / USD 3,500,286

Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 | Untitled (Pumpkin Sculpture) 無題（南瓜雕塑） | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Untitled (Pumpkin Sculpture), 2007
Urethane on FRP
100x100x100 cm (39 ⅜ x 39 ⅜ x 39 ⅜ inches)
Signed and dated 2007

#4. Pumpkin (S), 2014

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 13 December 2022
Estimated: HKD 16,000,000 – 23,000,000
HKD 26,995,000 / USD 3,472,159

Pumpkin (S) | 南瓜（S） | Modern and Contemporary Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin (S), 2014
Bronze
108x114x114 cm (42 ½ x 44 ⅞ x 44 ⅞ inches)
Incised Yayoi Kusama
This work is number 8 from an edition of 8, plus 2 artist’s proofs.

#5. I Carry on Living with the Pumpkins, 2013

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 13,800,000 – 18,800,000
HKD 17,010,000 / USD 2,179,372

REPEAT SALE

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 19 April 2021
Estimated: HKD 5,500,000 – 7,500,000
HKD 15,905,000 / USD 2,047,977

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
I Carry on Living with the Pumpkins, 2013
Aluminum, FRP and urethane paint
180 (H) x 180 x 30 cm (70 7/8 x 70 7/8 x 11 3/4 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Yayoi Kusama 2013’ (lower center)

#6. Pumpkin, 2002

SBI Art Auction: 12 March 2022
Estimated: JPY 30,000,000 – 50,000,000
JPY 65,550,000 / USD 558,682

RESULTS｜SBI Art Auction

YAYOI KUSAMA
Pumpkin, 2002
Mixed media (Acrylic, fabric, paper, Styrofoam and wood)
16.4 × 16.2 × 12.1 cm (6 1/2 x 6 3/8 x 4 3/4 inches)
Signed, titled and dated on the bottom

#7. Pumpkin Chess Set, 2003

Phillips Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 2,400,000 – 4,000,000
HKD 3,024,000 / USD 387,150

Yayoi Kusama – 20th Century & Cont… Lot 212 November 2022 | Phillips

#9. Untitled, 1985

Christie’s New-York: 18 November 2022
Estimated: USD 40,000 – 60,000
USD 189,000

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Untitled | Christie’s (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Untitled, 1985
Mixed media
10.1 x 11.4 x 11.4 cm (4 x 4 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Yayoi Kusama 1985’ (on the underside)
Executed in 1985. This work is unique

 

2021 Auction Results

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#1. PUMPKIN, 2017

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 1 December 2021
Estimated: HKD 28,000,000 – 38,000,000
HKD 55,450,000 / USD 7,114,766

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929) (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
PUMPKIN, 2017
Fiberglass-reinforced plastic and urethane paint sculpture in two parts
215 (H) x 180 x 180 cm (84 5/8 x 70 7/8 x 70 7/8 inches)
Signed and dated ‘YAYOI KUSAMA 2017’ (on the side)

#2. Pumpkin, 2010

Ravenel Taiwan: 5 December 2021
Estimated: TWD 40,000,000 – 60,000,000
TWD 141,440,000 / USD 5,102,453

Ravenel | Yayoi KUSAMA《Pumpkin》 Ravenel Autumn Auction 2021 Taipei Lot 226

YAYOI KUSAMA
Pumpkin, 2010
Urethane paint on fiberglass reinforced plastic
120(L) x 120(W) x 125(H) cm
Signed Yayoi Kusama in English and dated 2010

#3. Pumpkin, 2009

Christie’s London: 30 June 2021
Estimated: GBP 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
GBP 2,662,500 / USD 3,675,963

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Pumpkin | Christie’s (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Pumpkin, 2009
Painted fiberglass reinforced plastic
122x129x129 cm (48 x 50 3/4 x 50 3/4 inches)
Signed and dated ‘YAYOI KUSAMA 2009’ (on the side)

#4. Starry Pumpkin, 2017

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 23 May 2021
Estimated: HKD 18,000,000 – 28,000,000
HKD 21,850,000 / USD 2,813,872

 

YAYOI KUSAMA
Starry Pumpkin, 2017
Fiberglass-reinforced plastic and tile sculpture
183 (H) x 195 x 195 cm (72 x 76.7 x 76.7 inches)

#5. I Carry on Living with the Pumpkins, 2013

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 19 April 2021
Estimated: HKD 5,500,000 – 7,500,000
HKD 15,905,000 / USD 2,047,977

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
I Carry on Living with the Pumpkins, 2013
Aluminum, FRP and urethane paint
180 (H) x 180 x 30 cm (70 7/8 x 70 7/8 x 11 3/4 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Yayoi Kusama 2013’ (lower center)

#6. PUMPKIN (S)

Est-Ouest Auctions Tokyo: 1 October 2021
Estimated: JPY 120,000,000 – 130,000,000
JPY 186,400,000 / USD 1,664,475

YAYOI KUSAMA
PUMPKIN (S)
Mirror polished bronze
67.3 x 65 x 63.5 cm

#7. Self-Obliteration, 1999

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 25 May 2021
Estimated: HKD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
HKD 5,250,000 / USD 676,311

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Self-Obliteration | Christie’s (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Self-Obliteration, 1999
Mixed media sculpture
23.7 (H) x 18.2 x 15.2 cm (9 3/8 x 7 1/8 x 6 inches)
Signed, dated and titled ‘YAYOI KUSAMA SELF-OBLITERATION 1999’ (on the underside)

 

 

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Bronze Sculptures

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Pumpkin (M), 2016

Phillips London: 10 October 2024
Estimated: GBP 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
GBP 1,984,000 / USD 2,599,040

Yayoi Kusama – Modern & Contemporary … Lot 9 October 2024 | Phillips

Without doubt one of the most immediately recognizable motifs in contemporary art, the polka-dot covered pumpkin sits at the very heart of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s incredible 70-year practice, appearing across her work in paintings, sculpture, and immersive installations. Profoundly personal, 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. Beautifully realized here in undulating bronze, the exceptional free-standing sculpture captures the jovial vitality of the pumpkin, Kusama’s meticulously executed polka-dot design enlivening its voluptuously curved surface and acknowledging its esteemed place in her creative universe. So deeply enmeshed with Kusma’s biography and practice, the pumpkin is utterly synonymous with the artist herself, employed both as a universally recognized signature and a richly rewarding mode of self-representation that is most readily evoked in the freestanding sculptures.

Yayoi Kusama with a Pumpkin sculpture in Fukuoka, Japan, 1994. Image/Artwork: © YAYOI KUSAMA

Standing at just over a meter high, Pumpkin (M) is a rare domestically scaled example of Kusama’s bronze pumpkins embodying the ‘fertile self-enclosure and radical openness to others’ that best defines her sculptural practice and installations. Following the ungainly curves and swollen form of the gourd itself, Kusama’s idiosyncratic polka-dot design flows in waves across its pronounced contours, recalling the bold, graphic qualities of Pop’s serial approach to everyday consumer items as well as the sophisticated geometries and emphasis on pattern and visual sensation explored in Op Art. Working with this yielding organic form, Kusama moves beyond naturalistic representation, animating each of these three-dimensional pieces with a vitality and personality all of their own.

Although Kusama first started rendering large-scale pumpkins in fiberglass in the 1990s, it is with these later stunningly reflective bronze pieces Kusama approaches the immersive, interactive experiences of her mirrored environments. Created in 2016 for the artist’s installation Yayoi Kusama: Sculptures, Paintings & Mirror Rooms with Victoria Miro in London, the lustrous, mirror-polished Pumpkin (M) is amongst the first created by the artist, with other examples from the same edition having since been included in some of Kusama’s most significant exhibitions of recent years, including those held at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and PHI Foundation, Québec. Examples of Kusama’s monumental open-air pumpkin sculptures continue to move and enchant viewers, as was seen most famously in the international reaction to the typhoon damage sustained by the first and most beloved of these pieces, originally installed at the Benesse Art Site on Naoshima Island. Most recently, Kusama unveiled her tallest bronze sculpture to date this year, the 6-metre-high Pumpkin now permanently installed in Kensington Gardens, London. A stunning example of the artist’s most beloved and deeply personal motif, Pumpkin (M) speaks to Kusama’s genuine love for the gourd, and her desire to share this joy with her viewers.

Pumpkin (S), 2014

Sotheby’s London: 12 October 2023
Estimated: GBP 2,400,000 – 4,000,000
GBP 3,073,000 / USD 3,752,595

Pumpkin (S) | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin (S), 2014
Bronze
108x114x114 cm (42 1/2 x 44 7/8 x 44 7/8 inches)
Incised with the artist’s signature (near the base)
This work is number 1 from an edition of 8 plus 2 artist’s proofs

Kusama’s 2014 Pumpkin (S) sings of her earlier paintings, prints and Fibreglass pumpkins, while simultaneously marking a sophisticated reimagining and recasting of the artist’s most beloved motif. The bichrome, freestanding bronze sculpture measures over one metre tall and wide, with a plucky, dot-covered peduncle that pulls the viewer’s gaze upwards from the rotund base that sits flush to the ground. Embodying the “fertile self-enclosure and radical openness to others” that characterises Kusama’s monumental sculpture, the present work emerges organically from the ground, inhabiting its environment and asserting its squat presence within the viewer’s world (Leslie Camhi, “Large Sculpture,” in Louise Neri and Takaya Goto, eds., Yayoi Kusama, New York 2012, p. 214). The artist’s characteristic polka dots flow in rows across the sculpture’s surface, advancing and receding rhythmically in a fastidiously precise yet dynamically organic manner, following the natural curves of the pumpkin itself: an effect which creates a sophisticated geometry and sense of bulging roundness. Each sectional ridge of the pumpkin frames an array of dots that increases in size as the rib crests towards the Centre, creating complex dimensional depth to the pumpkin’s skin and shell and generating the sensation of liveliness and animation that is characteristic of Kusama’s practice.

Reversing the coloring between the stem and body of the pumpkin, Kusama ensures that the eye is pulled towards its intricate dot-covered top. As Gilda Williams notes, “On Japanese farms, kabocha are harvested prior to full maturity and continue to ripen off of the vine; perhaps for this reason in Kusama’s sculpture the broken stem always emphatically protrudes upwards, untethered to the earth below” (Exh. Cat., London, Victoria Miro, Yayoi Kusama: Bronze Pumpkins, 2014, p. 6). The smallest in the series, Pumpkin (S) radiates the potential that it might continue to flourish and nourish even after being “plucked,” expanding the artist’s fantastical cosmos ad infinitum.

Produced for and exhibited in the artist’s installation at the Victoria Miro Gallery in 2014, a significant year for Kusama whose work was the subject of three international museum exhibitions, this meticulously executed sculpture was two years in the making and marks the first instance of the artist working with bronze on such a monumental scale. The bronze pumpkins integrate many key aspects of Kusama’s practice: the reflectivity of the mirror, the repeating pattern of dots, a juxtaposition of light and dark, connotations of growth and fertility and the almost mythical status of the pumpkin within her art. Pumpkin (S) is an emblematic example of this, enlivened as its pitted surface catches and reflects light in a way that earlier painted and Fiberglass pumpkins cannot.

Pumpkin (M), 2016

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 24,000,000 – 40,000,000
HKD 22,230,000 / USD 2,838,681

Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 | Pumpkin (M) 南瓜（M） | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin (M), 2016
Mirror polished bronze
105x90x90 cm (41 3/8 x 35 3/8 x 35 3/8 inches)
Incised Yayoi Kusama
This work is number 6 from an edition of 8, plus 2 artist’s proofs

Virtuosic and resplendent in its paradigmatic dot-covered pumpkin motif, Yayoi Kusama’s Pumpkin (M) is an exceptional free-standing bronze sculpture. Beautifully realized in highly polished bronze, the artist’s iconic striations of multi-sized polka dots meticulously encase the pumpkin from stem to base in an effusive and sophisticated pattern. This dynamic design induces a rhythmic, enthralling and lively optical sensation through strategically and expertly placed dots that slither towards the top and bottom of the gourd and gather towards the creases of the pumpkin’s skin, an effect enhanced by the lustrous bronze. Produced for the artist’s installation at Victoria Miro Gallery in 2016, a significant year for Kusama whose work was the subject of an acclaimed European touring museum exhibition, this mirror-polished pumpkin is among the first created by the artist. Catching and reflecting ambient light with its dazzling surface, the present work is the largest of this polished series to have been offered at auction. Editions of the bronze Pumpkin (M) have been displayed at some of the artist’s most significant exhibitions of the last decade, including Tel Aviv Museum of Art and PHI Foundation, Québec.

Inspired by the matured pumpkin’s organic surface, Kusama’s stylized ribbons of multi-sized spots are most frequently depicted in yellow and black, making this iteration in bronze an exceptional example of the artist’s most fertile subject. Standing at over one meters tall, the exacting precision of Kusama’s skill can be felt throughout the biochromatic body of the sculpture, its monumental size and towering presence drawing attention to the undulating rows of meticulously placed dots. Delicately juxtaposing the light reflecting surface with the impressed black circles, Pumpkin (M) is an enchanting and hypnotic iteration of one of Kusama’s most celebrated motifs.

LONDON, VICTORIA MIRO, YAYOI KUSAMA: SCULPTURES, PAINTINGS & MIRROR ROOMS, MAY – JULY 2016 (EDITION NO. UNKNOWN)

One of the most admired and universally recognizable images of contemporary art today, the pumpkin is central to Kusama’s widely celebrated oeuvre, appearing throughout the artist’s work from flat canvases and abstract paintings to gallery-wide installations. Kusama’s pumpkins are the embodiment of optimism, serenity and joy – a motif which the artist has repeatedly returned to for its “spiritual balance”, inspiration and motivation. Redolent of her earlier paintings and prints, the engineering of the dot pattern on the great, curvaceous bronze Pumpkin (M) has evolved considerably. This tremendous recasting sees larger dots occupying central positions and smaller dots towards the bottom and top of the piece, an effect which creates a sophisticated geometry and sense of bulging roundness. With energetic rows of dots flowing towards the pumpkin’s stem, the viewer’s eye is drawn upwards from the natural curves of the pumpkin itself.

YAYOI KUSAMA, PUMPKIN (M), EDITION NO. UNKNOWN, 2016, ON DISPLAY AT THE ART GALLERY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA, 2020 (ON LOAN)

Perhaps the most beloved of Kusama’s motifs, the artist began working with the pumpkin as early as 1948 whilst studying at the Kyoto City Senior High School of Art, beginning a life-long fascination with the subject. In 1993, the kabocha formed part of her presentation in the Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and in 1994 her iconic exterior sculpture of a large yellow and black pumpkin was sited at the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, the first of many sculptures Kusama would increasingly display throughout the 2000s at open-air sites. Immersing the viewer within a landscape of limitless dots, the mesmerizing Pumpkin (M) induces a state of untethered contemplation within Kusama’s fantastical, cosmic world. The bold, architectural statement of Kusama’s bronze Pumpkin is as physically dominating as it is delicate, a testament to Kusama’s artistic ambition. The bronze Pumpkin (M) is exemplar of Kusama’s unique ability to collapse the division between her own consciousness and the external world. Widely considered the most important artist to have emerged from Japan in the post-war period, Kusama has endured among the most emblematic and iconic artists of the last century and beyond. Last year her work was exhibited at Hong Kong’s M+ Museum in the artist’s largest retrospective in Asia outside of Japan, a testament to her enduring legacy as one of the greatest contemporary artists working today.

Pumpkin (L), 2014

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 April 2023
Estimated: HKD 40,000,000 – 60,000,000
HKD 62,638,000 / USD 7,979,465

Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 | Pumpkin (L) 南瓜（L） | 50th Anniversary Contemporary Evening Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin (L), 2014
Bronze
241 x 235 x 235 cm (94 7/8 x 92 1/2 x 92 1/2 inches)
Incised Yayoi Kusama
This work is number 8 from an edition of 8, plus 2 artist’s proofs

Dazzling in its paradigmatic dot-covered pumpkin motif, Yayoi Kusama’s Pumpkin (L) (2014) is rare example of the artist’s highly coveted sculptural pumpkins. Beautifully materialized in bronze, the artist’s iconic striations of multi-sized polka dots meticulously encase the pumpkin from stem to base in an effusive and sophisticated pattern. Produced for the artist’s installation at the Victoria Miro Gallery in 2014, a significant year for Kusama whose work was the subject of three international museum exhibitions, this meticulously executed sculpture is the largest version of this series in bronze and the first of this monumental scale to be offered at auction. As the subject of Kusama’s first permanent public artwork in New York City, editions of the bronze Pumpkin (L) have been displayed in front of the Sky residency building in Manhattan, as well as the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park in Des Moines, Iowa.

ANOTHER EDITION OF THE PRESENT WORK INSTALLED IN THE JOHN AND MARY PAPPAJOHN SCULPTURE PARK, DES MOINES ART CENTER IN IOWA

Inspired by the matured pumpkin’s organic surface, Kusama’s stylized ribbons of multi-sized spots are most frequently depicted in yellow and black, making this iteration in bronze an exceptional example of the artist’s most fertile subject. Standing at over two metres tall, the exacting precision of Kusama’s skill can be felt throughout the biochromatic body of the sculpture, it’s monumental size and towering presence drawing attention to the undulating rows of meticulously placed dots. Going on to explore this form in a series of mirror-polished bronze pumpkins in 2016, the largest of these later works are equivalent to the Pumpkin (M) from the 2014 series, making the present work the largest of Kusama’s not colored bronze pumpkins.

Pumpkin (S), 2014

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 13 December 2022
Estimated: HKD 16,000,000 – 23,000,000
HKD 26,995,000 / USD 3,472,159

Pumpkin (S) | 南瓜（S） | Modern and Contemporary Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin (S), 2014
Bronze
108x114x114 cm (42 ½ x 44 ⅞ x 44 ⅞ inches)
Incised Yayoi Kusama
This work is number 8 from an edition of 8, plus 2 artist’s proofs.

Beautifully materialized in highly polished bronze, Pumpkin (S) is rare example of the artist’s highly coveted sculptural pumpkins. Produced for the artist’s installation at the Victoria Miro Gallery in 2014, a significant year for Kusama whose work was the subject of three international museum exhibitions, this meticulously executed sculpture was two years in the making and marks the first instance of the artist working with bronze on such a monumental scale. The most distinctive of Kusama’s motifs, the kabocha, the Japanese pumpkin, appears throughout the artist’s work from flat canvases and abstract painting to gallery-wide installations. Inspired by the surface of the pumpkin, Kusama’s stylized ribbons of multi-sized spots are most frequently depicted in yellow and black, making this iteration in bronze an exceptional example of the artist’s most fertile subject. Covering the entirety of the sculpture’s surface, the multiplicity of monochromatic polka dots provides a striking contrast to the works lustrous surface.

Pumpkin (M), 2014

Sotheby’s New-York: 16 November 2022
Estimated: USD 3,500,000 – 7,500,000
USD 6,529,100

Pumpkin (M) | The Now Evening Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin (M), 2014
Bronze
187x182x182 cm (73 ⅝ x 71 ⅝ x 71 ⅝ inches)
Incised Yayoi Kusama
The present work is number 8 from an edition of 8.

Virtuosic and resplendent in its paradigmatic dot-covered pumpkin motif, Kusama’s Pumpkin (M) is an exceptional free-standing bronze sculpture whose iconic and idiosyncratic striations of multi-sized polka dots meticulously encase the pumpkin from stem to base in an effusive and sophisticated pattern. Few subjects are as central to the artist’s widely commemorated oeuvre as the kabocha is to Kusama, whose profound connection to the pumpkin memorializes early childhood experiences visiting her family’s seed nursery, and can be traced back to a burgeoning, meditative practice of painting pumpkins during her early artist residency in Kyoto. The present work casts the archetypal pumpkin in bronze on a monumental scale, whose dynamic patterns induce a rhythmic, enthralling and lively optical sensation through strategically and expertly placed larger dots towards the center of the curvaceous pumpkin, and smaller dots that slither towards the top and bottom of the gourd and gather towards the creases of the pumpkin’s skin. As with many of her earlier Fiberglass and urethane pumpkins, Kusama reverses the color patterning between the stem and the body of the pumpkin, and carefully endows the top of the pumpkin’s upward-turned stem with numerous small dots, leaving no element of the pumpkin without an intricate, repetitive design. Weaving an intricate balance between the matured pumpkin’s organic form, and the profoundly delicate and seemingly boundless idiosyncratic ribbons of dots, Pumpkin (M) is the paradigm of the artist’ unequivocally consummate and impeccable oeuvre.

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Fiberglass Sculptures

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Pumpkin, 2019

Property from a Prestigious Private Collector
Sotheby’s New-York: 19 November 2025
Estimated: USD 1,700,000 – 2,500,000
USD 1,514,000

Pumpkin | Contemporary Day Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin, 2019
Fiberglass reinforced plastic, stainless steel, urethane paint and mirror
94 x 118.1 x 120.7 cm (37 x 46 1/2 x 47 1/2 inches)
Signed and dated 2019 (on the lower edge)

Executed in 2019, Pumpkin is a resplendent embodiment of Yayoi Kusama’s most celebrated motif and one of the most recognizable symbols in contemporary art. Appearing for the first time at auction, Pumpkin is cast in fiberglass and stainless steel with a hallow interior filled with circular mirrors, painted in her signature palette of radiant yellow and inky black, the work pulses with optical rhythm and formal clarity. It stands within a lineage that stretches across Kusama’s entire career – from her earliest childhood drawings of gourds in wartime Japan to the mirrored environments and monumental sculptures that have defined her global acclaim in the twenty-first century.

“I adore pumpkins. As my spiritual home since childhood, and with their infinite spirituality, they contribute to the peace of mankind across the world and to the celebration of humanity. And by doing so, they make me feel at peace.”

Yayoi Kusama with a Pumpkin sculpture in Fukuoka, Japan, 1994.
Image © Yayoi Kusama Inc. Art © 2024 Yayoi Kusama, Collection of Fukuoka Art Museum

For Kusama, the pumpkin is not simply an image of abundance or whimsy, but an object of deep psychological and spiritual resonance. She has described the motif as a source of comfort and peace, recalling her childhood fascination with the soft, organic irregularities of the gourd. Over decades, that humble form became a site of transcendence – a vessel through which she could negotiate the dualities of her experience: obsession and order, fear and fascination, the self and the infinite. In Pumpkin, these tensions are resolved through a dazzling union of form and surface. The sculpture’s glossy, industrial skin reflects the precision of modern manufacture, while its playful, perforated body evokes the irregular rhythms of nature. The alternating pattern of black dots – a lifelong emblem of Kusama’s artistic and psychological universe – spreads across the surface like a living cellular structure, at once microcosmic and cosmic.

Yayoi Kusama in her studio, New York, 1963.

The Pumpkin series occupies a unique place within Kusama’s practice, bridging the intimate and the monumental, the handmade and the technological. Her earliest soft sculptures of the 1960s, covered in sewn protrusions, prefigured the tactile physicality of these later works. By the 1990s, the pumpkin had become central to her sculptural lexicon, culminating in the monumental Pumpkin (1994) installed at the Benesse Art Site on Naoshima Island – a global icon of contemporary Japanese art. In the present work, executed nearly three decades later, Kusama revisits the motif with renewed intensity. The punctured surface of the sculpture transforms solid form into light and void, inviting the viewer to peer through its openings and experience the interplay between interior and exterior. This act of looking – of immersion and reflection – echoes the phenomenological engagement of her Infinity Mirror Rooms, in which the boundaries of self dissolve into endless patterns.

Yayoi Kusama, “Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity,” 2009. Collection of the artist. Hirshhorn Museum. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore; Victoria Miro, London; David Zwirner, New York. © Yayoi Kusama.

Kusama’s pumpkins have often been read as self-portraits, expressions of her psychological terrain rendered in radiant, tactile form. Yet they also operate on a universal level, embodying the tension between individuality and repetition that defines much of her art.

“My desire was to predict and measure the infinity of the boundless universe from my own position in it.
By using polka dots to infinity, I break myself away from this earth.”

The present Pumpkin enacts this transformation with striking clarity: through repetition and reflection, it converts the material world into a field of infinite perception.

 

Like Kusama’s Pumpkin, Jeff Koons’s Rabbit (1986) reimagines an object of childhood delight as a mirror of contemporary consciousness. Cast in stainless steel, Koons’s inflatable bunny turns innocence into luxury, its flawless surface reflecting the viewer and the culture of desire that produced it. Where Rabbit explores the seductions and ironies of consumerism, Kusama’s Pumpkin transforms reflection into meditation—using repetition and color not for spectacle, but for transcendence. Both works, through their industrial perfection and iconic simplicity, embody the opposing yet complementary impulses of contemporary sculpture: irony and introspection, surface and soul.

Jeff Koons, Rabbit, 1986. The Broad, Los Angeles. © Jeff Koons Douglas M. Parker Studio, Los Angeles.

In its luminous precision, Pumpkin exemplifies Kusama’s late style: technically refined, psychologically charged, and suffused with serenity. The gleaming yellow surface, punctuated by the hypnotic pulse of black dots, seems to oscillate between micro and macro, body and cosmos. It invites viewers into a dialogue between joy and contemplation – a space where art becomes both mirror and sanctuary. Ultimately, Pumpkin encapsulates the paradox at the heart of Kusama’s art: an obsessive repetition that leads not to confinement, but to liberation. What began as a childhood fascination has become one of the most powerful visual languages of our time – a symbol of endurance, empathy, and the infinite imagination of an artist who, through her polka-dotted universe, continues to find infinity in the everyday.

Pumpkin, 2022

Christie’s New-York: 21 November 2024
Estimated: USD 6,000,000 – 8,000,000
USD 6,826,000

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Pumpkin | Christie’s

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Pumpkin, 2022
Fiberglass reinforced plastic and urethane paint, in three parts
245x260x260 cm (96 1/2 x 102 x 102 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Yayoi Kusama 2022’ (on the side)

Emerging from the earth in splendid majesty, Yayoi Kusama’s monumental Pumpkin attains spatial dominance, drawing all in its presence into the artist’s ever-expanding universe. One of the largest examples of the celebrated Japanese artist’s most famous subjects,  Pumpkin embodies eight decades of meditative refinement of this autobiographical motif. Universally recognizable, the first large-scale pumpkin appeared as a permanent installation on Naoshima Island as part of the “Out of Bounds: Contemporary Art in the Seascape” exhibition in 1994. As such, Pumpkin joins the canon of contemporary sculpture, such as those by Jeff Koons, that has reinvigorated the genre for a new audience.

In the present work, an infinity of Kusama’s iconic black dots appear against the yellow backdrop, covering the entire variegated gourd. Large, weighty dots ascend each of the pumpkin’s ribs, articulating the organic shape, while further dots dwindle in scale as they recede into the pumpkin’s folds, ending as minute dashes barely visible from afar much as distant stars diminish into oblivion. Kusama’s palette is inspired by the typical Japanese kabocha, the type of pumpkin which she was first introduced to as a young child. The form has a deeply personal meaning to her—Kusama describes in her autobiography how in elementary school her grandfather took her to a seed-harvesting ground, where she “caught glimpses of the yellow flowers and baby fruit of pumpkin vines. I stopped to lean in for a closer look, and there it was: a pumpkin the size of a man’s head” (Y. Kusama, Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, Tate Publishing, 2013, pg. 75). She goes on to describe how the pumpkin “immediately began speaking to me in the most animated manner. It was still moist with dew, indescribably appealing, and tender to the touch” (op. cit.). This first encounter with the pumpkin has ever since informed Kusama’s perception of both herself and the wider world.

Crowning the work is a slightly bowed peduncle relaying an inverse color arrangement from the body of the sculpture. This reversal draws the viewer’s eye to the very top of the sculpture, toward the space in which the boundless dots coalesce like a black hole, consuming all matter. In Japan, Kabocha are severed from their vines prior to attaining full maturity, left to ripen off the vine. This physical untethering of the fruit from the earth informs the sense of overpowering, endless expansion relayed by Pumpkin’s stem, both aspects together further accentuating Kusama’s oeuvre-defining practice of establishing an infinity of space to expose and protect against the underlying darkness she perceives through her hallucinosis.

Starry Pumpkin, 2016

Sotheby’s New-York: 20 November 2024
Estimated: USD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
USD 2,340,000

Starry Pumpkin | The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Starry Pumpkin, 2016
Fiberglass reinforced plastic and tile
146.1 x 142.2 x 134.6 cm (57 1/2 x 56 x  53 inches)
Signed, titled and dated 2016 (on a label affixed to the interior)

Yayoi Kusama’s Starry Pumpkin, executed in 2016, epitomizes the artist’s unparalleled contributions to the contemporary canon, serving as a transformative locus wherein earthly simplicity intersects with profound metaphysical resonance. In this seminal work, Kusama metamorphoses the humble pumpkin, an emblem of simplicity and an object of mundane origin, into a vessel that brims with transcendent, almost sacral significance. The mosaic surface of Starry Pumpkin is encrusted with an intricate tessellation of mirrored tiles, each positioned with a meticulous precision which coalesces into patterns that transcend the visual and evoke a meditative engagement. This transformation elevates the pumpkin beyond mere objecthood, instead presenting it as a semi-sublime icon with its glittering mirrored reflections speaking to both the individual viewer’s gaze and the collective human experience within the infinity. Kusama’s mastery lies in her ability to draw the viewer into a dialogue with both themselves and the infinite, an experience that reveals a profound sensitivity to the spaces where art, self, and universe intersect. In the subject work, Kusama bridges her personal symbolic use of the pumpkin with her renowned polka dot motif, and the resulting composition is both monolithic in its formidable presence and delicate in its nuanced execution. Starry Pumpkin is a work of profound depth and museum-caliber significance, serving as a pivotal piece within Kusama’s oeuvre that meticulously weaves visual complexity with thematic resonance.

Yayoi Kusama with a Pumpkin sculpture in Fukuoka, Japan, 1994.
Image © Yayoi Kusama Inc. Art © 2024 Yayoi Kusama, Collection of Fukuoka Art Museum

A reiteration of Kusama’s iconic black and yellow palette is rendered anew, where the classic polka dot motif gains an iridescent vibrancy that pulses with a rhythmic motion and a chromatic synthesis. Starry Pumpkin not only echoes Kusama’s early pumpkins but also amplifies their metaphysical resonance, with each reflective fragment acting as both mirror and medium, capturing light only to refract it anew. This bestows the composition with a jewel-like opulence that not only resonates with the aesthetic traditions of Baroque art, but also engages in a broader dialogue with art history, invoking the intricate patterns of the mosaics of ancient Rome and Greece. In the ancient world, the mosaics served as both decorative and narrative instruments, transforming surfaces into visual tapestries that articulated complex stories, akin to Kusama’s work, which similarly invites contemplation and reflects the cultural and philosophical ideals of its own era. This resplendent choreography of light and form brings Starry Pumpkin to an apotheosis within Kusama’s body of work, elevating the signature pumpkin into a radiant artifact suffused with spiritual resonance and gravity.

“I adore pumpkins. As my spiritual home since childhood, and with their infinite spirituality, they contribute to the peace of mankind across the world and to the celebration of humanity. And by doing so they make me feel at peace… Giving off an aura of my sacred mental state, they embody a base for the joy of living; a living shared by all of humankind on the earth. It is for the pumpkins that I keep on going.” 

The pumpkin’s personal mythology resonates deeply within Kusama’s oeuvre, transcending its hearty, earthly origins to emerge as an emblem of both comfort and resilience. Growing up in Matsumoto City, Japan, where her parents harvested seeds for a living, Kusama later regarded the pumpkin as a comforting presence amidst her intense hallucinations – an idea she later revisited as a mature artist upon returning to Japan from the post-war avant-garde circles of New York. Recontextualized through Kusama’s spiritual and introspective lens, the pumpkin is transformed from a childhood staple into a symbol of resilience, an icon woven into her very psyche and elevated in her practice to the status of a personal and symbolic alter ego and self portrait. In Starry Pumpkin, this metamorphosis is intensified through scale and material, as the pumpkin becomes a cosmic manifestation imbued with a spiritual reverence that transcends its humble origins.

Byzantine School, Emperor Justinian I and his Retinue of Officials, Guards and Clergy, c. 547 AD. Image © Bridgeman Images

Kusama’s mosaic pumpkins have garnered international acclaim and stand as testaments to her meticulous artistry and visionary scope. Kusama: Cosmic Nature at the New York Botanical Garden in 2021 showcased a mosaic pumpkin, in this case a golden mosaic pumpkin dotted in red, and The Kusama Museum, Tokyo, houses a Starry Pumpkin rendered in a radiant pink variation. Starry Pumpkin stands as a work of truly profound consequence in Kusama’s oeuvre and is an enduring monument to both the artist’s life and her spiritual inquiries. The series not only solidifies Kusama’s status within the pantheon of contemporary art, but stretches the parameters of the field itself, challenging and redefining the possibilities of sculptural form. Through these monumental mosaic works, Kusama invites us to reflect on the intricate connections between the personal and the universal, to consider the transformative power of art to elevate the ordinary into the extraordinary, and ultimately, to encounter beauty as a gateway to boundless transcendence. Starry Pumpkin becomes a testament not only to Kusama’s vision, but also to the vast, untapped potential within the human gaze to find the infinite within the finite.

Pumpkin, 2019

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 April 2024
Estimated: HKD 28,000,000 – 38,000,000
HKD 36,145,000 / USD 4,620,941

Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 | Pumpkin 南瓜 | Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin, 2019
Urethane on fiberglass reinforced plastic
120x138x138 cm (47 1/4 x 54 3/8 x 54 3/8 inches)
Signed and dated 2019

Voluptuous, idiosyncratic, and exuding a fierce vitality, Pumpkin (2019) is an archetypal example of Yayoi Kusama’s highly coveted fiberglass reinforced plastic pumpkins. Rendered in Kusama’s signature palette of yellow and black, the meticulously executed pumpkin sculpture measures a meter tall and a meter wide. One of the most admired and universally recognizable images of contemporary art today, Kusama’s pumpkins are central to the artist’s widely celebrated oeuvre, examples of which can be found in private collections and significant institutions around the world, including the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC and the Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan. Few subjects are as central to the artist’s widely commemorated oeuvre as the kabocha is to Kusama, whose profound connection to the pumpkin memorializes early childhood experiences visiting her family’s seed nursery, and can be traced back to a burgeoning, meditative practice of painting pumpkins during her early artist residency in Kyoto. Feisty and universally adored, these pumpkins are an embodiment of optimism, serenity and joy – an artistic and symbolic motif which the artist repeatedly returned to for “spiritual balance”, inspiration and motivation (Yayoi Kusama, trans. Ralph McCarthy, Infinity Net, Tate Publishing, London, 2011, p.76).

YAYOI KUSAMA, PUMPKIN, 2022 ©YAYOI KUSAMA（PHOTO : TADASU YAMAMOTO）/ BENESSE ART SITE NAOSHIMA, JAPAN

Cast in a luminous shade of yellow on a monumental scale, the dynamic patterns of black undulated dots of the present work induce a rhythmic, enthralling and lively optical sensation. Strategically and expertly placing larger dots towards the center of the curvaceous pumpkin while smaller dots slither towards the top and bottom of the gourd and gather towards the creases of the pumpkin’s skin, our eyes are drawn to the pumpkin’s stems. Here Kusama reverses the color patterning between the stem and the body of the pumpkin, and carefully endows the top of the pumpkin’s upward-turned stem with numerous small dots, leaving no element of the pumpkin without an intricate, repetitive design. Weaving an intricate balance between the matured pumpkin’s organic form, and the profoundly delicate and seemingly boundless idiosyncratic ribbons of dots, Pumpkin is the paradigm of the artist’s unequivocally consummate and impeccable oeuvre. The pumpkin is perhaps the most beloved of Kusama’s motifs, owing to their grounding and spiritually-balanced energy that Kusama recognized even in childhood. Recalling this period, Kusama notes that the practice of painting pumpkins instilled a meditative-like quality to her days, and the diligence and devotion to which she painted pumpkins during this time made a lifelong impression on her to maintain the subject throughout the rest of her career.

Kusama began to incorporate pumpkins into her dot-motif paintings, prints, drawings and installations, including the environmental installation Mirror Room (Pumpkin) displayed in 1991. The room was subsequently featured as the centerpiece in her exhibition at the Japanese Pavilion in the 1993 Venice Biennale, during which she presided over the room in polka-dotted magician garb and handed smaller takeaway pumpkins to visitors. Exhibition-goers were wonderstruck as they walked into a room covered from floor to ceiling in swaths of yellow and black polka-dots that seemed to stretch and proliferate into infinity as the result of a mirrored-cube placed at the center of the installation. For Kusama, the practice of covering objects in polka dots arose equally as a means of self-stabilizing, meditative repetition, as much as the production of profoundly exploratory experiences that could radically upend a distinction between objectivity and reality. Her ubiquitous polka-dot and pumpkin motifs forged a wholly unique aesthetic that articulated a rigorous, all-consuming language of repetition, accumulation and atomization that proffered an effervescent foray into the tenuous bounds between nothingness and infinity, selfhood and self-obliteration. The pumpkin, like polka-dots, became a form of self-portraiture that would continue to feature prominently in her works.

Exuding a sense of peace, serenity and vitality, Pumpkin imparts a feeling of abundance and triumph, much like the sense of harvest that the vegetable itself implies. For Kusama, bringing together the pumpkin and the polka-dot motif is as much a meditative practice of repetition as it is one that concerns the philosophical practice of disintegrating the bounds between finitude and infinitude that is profoundly personal to the artist as well. Kusama’s acute ability to weave deeply imaginative and interpersonal devotion towards pumpkins with a profound contemplation of her own experience cements her as one of the twentieth and twenty-first century’s most iconic artists, whose pumpkin sculptures are the exemplar of the artist’s luminescent career.

I Carry on Living with the Pumpkins, 2013

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 30 November 2022
Estimated: HKD 13,800,000 – 18,800,000
HKD 17,010,000 / USD 2,179,372

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), I Carry on Living with the Pumpkins | Christie’s (christies.com)

REPEAT SALE

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 19 April 2021
Estimated: HKD 5,500,000 – 7,500,000
HKD 15,905,000 / USD 2,047,977

Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 | I Carry on Living with the Pumpkins 我繼續與南瓜相伴生活 | Contemporary Art Evening Sale | 2021 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
I Carry on Living with the Pumpkins, 2013
Aluminum, FRP and urethane paint
180 (H) x 180 x 30 cm (70 7/8 x 70 7/8 x 11 3/4 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Yayoi Kusama 2013’ (lower center)

Feisty and iconic, I Carry on Living with the Pumpkins manifests Kusama Yayoi’s paradigmatic pumpkin motif in an exceptional form that straddles two-dimensional painting and three-dimensional sculpture. Multi-sized striated black dots slither over the bulging electric yellow skin of the pumpkin, exhibiting extraordinary precision in skill and execution. Rendered in yellow and black, the most classic palette of Kusama’s corpus of pumpkin sculptures, the sculpture’s intense color juxtaposition and dynamic patterns induce a rhythmic and enthralling optical sensation. Kusama’s pumpkins are one of the most loved and recognized images in contemporary art today; classic and universally adored, they are an embodiment of optimism, serenity and joy – an artistic and symbolic motif which the artist repeatedly returned to for “spiritual balance”, inspiration and motivation.

During the 1980s Kusama explored colorful variations of her pumpkin-pattern in two-dimensional paintings, drawings and prints; over the years her rendering of pumpkin ‘skin’ grew ever defter and more accomplished, with the flowing lines of dots advancing and receding rhythmically in a fastidiously precise yet dynamically organic manner. Even the seemingly blank or ‘undotted’ yellow segments are overlaid with miniscule black specks, contributing to a complex and intensely laborious configuration that pulsates and disorients with energy akin to that of Op art paintings. Towards the latter half of the 1980s, Kusama began exhibiting more frequently at exhibitions around the world. Appreciation for Kusama’s work grew steadily, and in 1993, her international revival was made official when she was invited as the first solo artist and first woman ever to grace the Japanese pavilion at the 45th Venice Biennale. For the occasion, Kusama constructed Mirror Room (Pumpkin), consuming the entire interior of the pavilion in a floor-to-ceiling extravaganza of black-on-yellow polka dots. At its centre was a dazzling mirrored room filled with pumpkin sculptures, echoing her seminal 1966 Infinity Mirror Room—Love Forever whilst introducing the theme of the pumpkin. Tatehata Akira, the commissioner of the Japanese Pavilion, also organized a mini-retrospective of Kusama’s career to accompany the newly commissioned installation.

YAYOI KUSAMA WITH PUMPKIN, 2010, INSTALLATION VIEW AICHI TRIENNALE 2010 © YAYOI KUSAMA

I Carry on Living with the Pumpkins, a particularly distinctive creation straddling the realms of painting and sculpture, was created in 2013, twenty years after Kusama’s triumphant comeback at the 1993 Venice Biennale. It was to pumpkins that Kusama turned for solace during her period of reclusion, and it was with pumpkins in mind that she set about creating a work for her Venice Biennale solo exhibition. I Carry on Living with Pumpkins thus represents not only a mediation of the artist’s psychiatric illness but also as a symbol of victory for the artist’s personal rebirth and international resurgence – the pumpkin motif functioning as a kind of talisman that protects and motivates the artist to ‘carry on’ and live triumphantly.

Untitled (Pumpkin sculpture), 2007

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 7 October 2022
Estimated: HKD 32,000,000 – 45,000,000
HKD 27,479,000 / USD 3,500,286

Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 | Untitled (Pumpkin Sculpture) 無題（南瓜雕塑） | Contemporary Evening Auction | 2022 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Untitled (Pumpkin Sculpture), 2007
Urethane on FRP
100x100x100 cm (39 ⅜ x 39 ⅜ x 39 ⅜ inches)
Aigned and dated 2007

Sought-after for its voluptuous, full shape, Untitled (Pumpkin Sculpture) (2007) is an archetypal example of the artist’s highly coveted fiberglass reinforced plastic pumpkins. Rendered in Kusama’s signature palette of yellow and black, the meticulously-executed pumpkin sculpture measures a meter tall and a meter wide. One of the most admired and universally recognizable images of contemporary art today, Kusama’s pumpkins are central to the artist’s widely celebrated oeuvre, examples of which can be found in private collections and significant institutions around the world, such as the Fukuoka Prefectural Museum of Art in Japan. Significantly, the present work was exhibited at the artist’s landmark retrospective in Tel Aviv, Israel, titled, Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective, from November 2021 to May 2022, the artist’s first major exhibition in Israel that brought together artworks produced over an 80 year period.

PUMPKIN, 2017

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 1 December 2021
Estimated: HKD 28,000,000 – 38,000,000
HKD 55,450,000 / USD 7,114,766

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929) (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
PUMPKIN, 2017
Fiberglass-reinforced plastic and urethane paint sculpture in two parts
215 (H) x 180 x 180 cm (84 5/8 x 70 7/8 x 70 7/8 inches)
Signed and dated ‘YAYOI KUSAMA 2017’ (on the side)

Pumpkin is a symbol of triumph in Kusama’s artistic career and life. Yayoi Kusama grew up in Matsumoto in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. She has been captivated by pumpkins since she was small at the seed harvesting farm of her family’s. In the early 1940s, the artist started experiencing hallucinations, and around the same time she started painting pumpkin. Looking for a breakthrough and unsupported by her family, Kusama embarked on a solo journey and moved across the Pacific Ocean to New York in 1958. She immersed herself in the city’s post-war cultural scene, quickly establishing a reputation in the new environment. Shortly within a year, she debuted her solo exhibition in the city and created a buzz in the art circle. Turning vulnerabilities into power, Kusama nullified the intense hallucinations she experienced by introducing them into her painterly reality and created these kaleidoscope patterns of dots and nets repeatedly. The iconic dotted pumpkin thus became a display of her internal struggles, in which she returned to a state of mental balance by creating endless colorful iterations of the spotted fruit. Today, the pumpkin has achieved an almost mythical status in Kusama’s oeuvre and stands as the artist’s alter ego.

“I use my complexes and fears as subjects. I make them and make them and then keep on making them, until I bury myself in the process. I call this ‘obliteration’.”

Gleaming in solid black and electric yellow, Pumpkin (M) is a larger-than-life sized sculpture that puts one in awe when seen in person. The ubiquitous polka dots manifested all over an organic, bulbous pumpkin. Over 2 meters tall, this majestic pumpkin sculpture evokes an unfathomable force just as the pumpkin in the field that attracted Kusama when she was young. On her encounter with pumpkin, she once mentioned “it (pumpkin) 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.” Pumpkins and dots are two pivotal motifs in the artist’s career for it signified her official international appearance. In 1993, she represented Japan at the 45th Venice Biennale with the immersive Mirror Room (Pumpkin). The world-known installation is a reflective room speckled with endless yellow and black polka dots from floor to ceiling. In the middle of it stood another small room that contains an infinite field of pumpkins in the same yellow and black spotted design as the exterior.

28 years later, the artist drew the world’s attention once again when one of her very first yellow pumpkin sculptures fell into the sea during a typhoon in Naoshima. Digital content about the incident instantly flooded the newsfeed across multiple social media platforms. Though an absolute unfortunate incident, it shows the popularity of the 92-year-old artist has never ceased but continued in triumph. Sharing resemblance with many museum-level pumpkin sculptures, Pumpkin is Yayoi Kusama’s largest yellow pumpkin sculpture to be ever offered in auction. Across Kusama’s expansive oeuvre, pumpkin has been an iconic and staple motif that is widely known by many. It was from painting pumpkin that she found solace and comfort in when she was struggling with mental illness. As one of the most tagged artists on Instagram with over 80million posts, the Japanese female artist continues to live her legacy with more major retrospectives to open in the near future, including Hong Kong.

Pumpkin, 2010

Ravenel Taiwan: 5 December 2021
Estimated: TWD 40,000,000 – 60,000,000
TWD 141,440,000 / USD 5,102,453

Ravenel | Yayoi KUSAMA《Pumpkin》 Ravenel Autumn Auction 2021 Taipei Lot 226

YAYOI KUSAMA
Pumpkin, 2010
Urethane paint on fiberglass reinforced plastic
120(L) x 120(W) x 125(H) cm
Signed Yayoi Kusama in English and dated 2010

Leaving the canvas and taking three-dimensional form, Pumpkin brings Yayoi Kusama’s visually stimulating compositions to tangible reality. Carefully sculpted in the asymmetrical imperfection of true life, Pumpkin commands attention and consideration despite its static and deceptively simple nature. Arranged in trooping lines of various size along the swells and valleys of the globular gourd, Kusama’s iconic black dots emphasize the dimensional texture of the sculpture, adding further depth and elevating the form beyond conventional aspect. The spherical nature of the pumpkin’s structure echoes the meticulous stripes of dots, establishing the sculpture as a conceptual emblem of the dot itself.

Pumpkin, 2009

Christie’s London: 30 June 2021
Estimated: GBP 1,200,000 – 1,800,000
GBP 2,662,500 / USD 3,675,963

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Pumpkin | Christie’s (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Pumpkin, 2009
Painted fiberglass reinforced plastic
122x129x129 cm (48 x 50 3/4 x 50 3/4 inches)
Signed and dated ‘YAYOI KUSAMA 2009’ (on the side)

Bedecked in gleaming black and yellow, Yayoi Kusama’s Pumpkin (2009) is a charming sculptural incarnation of the artist’s most beloved motif. The vegetable’s plump, ribbed form bulges weightily outward towards its base; its volume is enhanced by the rows of black polka-dots that dapple its yellow skin, which dilate from pinpoints to large circles according to the swell of the surface. The stalk flips the scheme into yellow on black, while its cut cross-section holds further rings of concentric dots, as if intimating a limitless polka-dot interior. Both pumpkin and polka-dot are foundational obsessions for Kusama, who at ten years old began to experience overwhelming hallucinations of patterned fabric coming to life, and flowers and pumpkins speaking to her. It was around this time that she began to paint. A soothing and tactile presence, Pumpkin exemplifies Kusama’s ability to channel her visions into wondrous, three-dimensional beings.

The pumpkin’s solid, reassuring beauty manifests Kusama’s belief in the curative power of art. The childhood visions which guide her practice were initially a reaction to a distressing emotional environment. Through her meditative, repetitious techniques and motifs, she is able to explore, transform and overcome this trauma: by losing herself in infinities of dots, mirrors and cosmic space, she finds a form of poetic transcendence. These works ultimately go beyond the biographical, evoking unfathomable forces that lie outside the limits of human imagination. While Pumpkin is a deeply personal object, it similarly appeals to a universal sense of serenity, pleasure and organic warmth, becoming a fertile avatar for the magic and mystery of life itself.

 

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Tiles Sculptures

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Pumpkin, 2016

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 5 April 2024
Estimated: HKD 24,000,000 – 34,000,000
HKD 24,045,000 / USD 3,074,022

Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 | Pumpkin 南瓜 | Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction | 2024 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin, 2016
Tiles on FRP, glue and steel
230x230x35 cm (90 1/2 x 90 1/2 x 13 3/4 inches)
Signed, titled and dated 2016 on the reverse

A monumentally arresting work of radiating brilliance, Yayoi Kusama’s Pumpkin manifests Yayoi Kusama’s paradigmatic pumpkin motif in an exceptional form that straddles two-dimensional painting and three-dimensional sculpture. A towering vision standing at over two meters tall, Kusama transforms the humble gourd into a mesmerizing jewel. Delicately encrusted in thousands of glistening tiles that blaze with a kaleidoscopic solar intensity, the present work is an exceedingly rare iteration of the artist’s most quintessential subject. Bringing together the artist’s signature pattern and favourite shape, Pumpkin is a treasure of museum-quality – indeed making its debut at the artist’s extensive retrospective at The National Art Center, Japan, in 2017 – which magnificently encapsulates Kusama’s dexterous skill and meticulous technique, as well as the singular vision that drives her legendary career. Distinguished from other iterations for its mosaic surface, it is the first from Kusama’s tiled-relief series of pumpkin sculptures to ever come to auction.

An effulgent tribute to the artist’s painstaking dedication and emblematic craftsmanship, the sculpture is utterly absorbing for its dazzling optical illusion and monumental presence. The prismatic patterns of shining tiles which illuminate the surface of the pearlescent black pumpkin recreate the tessellated net patterning that has characterized Kusama’s work for decades. Here, Kusama’s signature Infinity Nets are replaced by stunningly bright and dazzling ceramic pieces, yet the resultant whole maintains her obsessive and mesmerizing evocation of infinity, as the multitude of tiny squares rhythmically expand across the monumental undulating surface uninterruptedly. Bridging the artist’s celebrated pumpkin paintings and her freestanding sculptures, the present work encapsulates all of the artist’s major motifs in tessellated vibrancy. The mirrored surfaces of the mosaic tiles, much like Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms, are continually receptive to changes in light and environment, suggesting the never-ending expanse of the universe, a profound concept that forms the theoretical basis for her artistic practice and epitomizes her inimitable style. The shifting purples, blue and blacks of the pumpkins body is contrasted with the bold yellow polka dots which wrap around the pumpkins form. Set against an electric red Infinity Net, itself formed through thousands of tiles, the curvaceous form of the pumpkin emerges with a dazzlingly visual narrative that recalls the hypnotic illusions of Op Art.

Similarly, the hearty, earthy pumpkin represents Kusama’s quintessential subject matter. An intensely personal and autobiographical shape for the artist, it has become a kind of self-portrait for the artist. Explaining the appeal of the Japanese pumpkin, or kabocha, Kusama has said, “I was enchanted by their charming and winsome form. What appealed to me most was the pumpkin’s generous unpretentiousness. That and its solid spiritual balance”(Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, London 2011, p. 76). A fascination that has extended from her earliest childhood, these pumpkins provided the initial inspiration for her signature pattern, the expanse of dots developing as a stylized version of the kabocha’s natural markings. Kusama has pursued the motif across myriad colours, scales, and media, and spent decades following it to the extreme logic exemplified here. Despite the commonality of Kusama’s most fertile subject, which the artist believes does “not do not inspire much respect” (Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, trans. Ralph McCarthy, London 2011), Kusama elevates the Pumpkin to the status of a holy relic – a rich, dynamic, and deeply introspective work of resplendent brilliance.

YAYOI KUSAMA, ROOM (PUMPKIN), 1991. COLLECTION OF HARA MUSEUM CONTEMPORARY ART, JAPAN © YAYOI KUSAMA

Instilled with a dynamic energy that animates the entire work through its pattern of glittering ceramic tiles in electric hues, Pumpkin exudes a fierce vitality and abundance. A particularly distinctive creation straddling the realms of painting and sculpture, the present work is utterly absorbing for its dazzling optical illusion and monumental presence. Characterized by her ability to express the dialectic relationship between infinite and finite space, Kusama’s meditative practice of repetition is at once profoundly personal, and universally admired. Weaving together deeply imaginative iconography with a mediative exactitude, Kusama’s pumpkins are a consummate example of the career of one of the twenty-first century’s most iconic artists.

Starry Pumpkin Gold, 2014

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 25 May 2022
Estimated: HKD 20,000,000 – 30,000,000
HKD 40,050,000 / USD 5,101,976

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929) (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA
Starry Pumpkin Gold, 2014
Fiberglass-reinforced plastic and tile sculpture
185 (H) x 214 x 214 cm (72.9 x 84.2 x 84.2 inches)

A monumental sculpture of radiating brilliance, Yayoi Kusama’s Starry Pumpkin Gold marks the height of the artist’s lifelong artistic pursuit. Standing at almost two meters tall, its immense presence and mesmerizing glimmer transform the fruit into a holy treasure, charging dynamism into its force field. Golden tiles and kaleidoscopic dots coat the artist’s most quintessential subject, channeling a blazing intensity and whimsical rhythm that distinguish Starry Pumpkin Gold from Kusama’s other pumpkin iterations. It is indeed a magnificent work of museum caliber and extreme scarcity—the third glittering monumental pumpkin to ever be auctioned and one of the largest to have appeared so far.

A few iterations of Starry Pumpkin Gold have witnessed international fanfare in museums and exhibitions worldwide. In 2021, the New York Botanical Garden hosted ‘Kusama: Cosmic Nature’, a large-scale sculpture and installation exhibition dedicated to Kusama’s fascination with nature. Its centerpiece—a golden mosaic pumpkin featuring red dots—prominently sat amongst blooming daffodils, flaunting Kusama’s characteristic flair. In Tokyo, the Yayoi Kusama Museum’s Starry Pumpkin with pink tiles overlooks the cityscape. The sculpture’s saturated colors establish an alternative reality but at the same time, echoes the city’s vibrancy. Kusama’s mosaic pumpkin sculptures are the most venerated museum-caliber works, witnesses to the artist’s exhaustive craftsmanship and legendary vision. The larger-than-life pillar is a creation of utmost rarity, with only two mosaic pumpkins previously appearing in auction.

Starry Pumpkin, 2017

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 23 May 2021
Estimated: HKD 18,000,000 – 28,000,000
HKD 21,850,000 / USD 2,813,872

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929) (christies.com)

 

YAYOI KUSAMA
Starry Pumpkin, 2017
Fiberglass-reinforced plastic and tile sculpture
183 (H) x 195 x 195 cm (72 x 76.7 x 76.7 inches)

On 10 April 2021, as the Covid-19 pandemic continues its grip and hardly an obvious time to unveil a blockbuster exhibition, New York Botanical Garden opened ‘Cosmic Nature’ on its sprawling 250 acre grounds, dedicated to Yayoi Kusama’s lifelong preoccupation with the natural world. Despite limited visitor numbers due to social-distancing controls and travel restrictions, the exhibition quickly became one of the most talked-about cultural events of the year. Images of the show – such as “Dancing Pumpkin” (2020), an exuberant 5-meter-tall yellow octopus with black spots, and “Starry Pumpkin” (2015, pictured) a radiant golden and red gourd housed in a conservatory amidst flora and fauna – filled the media, both traditional and social. This outpour of excitement and admiration for the exhibition underscores the enduring appeal of Kusama, her delirious portrayal of hallucinatory experiences all the more relatable during these trying times.

YAYOI KUSAMA, Dancing Pumpkin, New-York Botanical Garden

Starry Pumpkin is one of Kusama’s more recent creations, a 2-meter tall sculpture whose surface is composed of a shimmering mosaic of blue and white squares. Neatly lined in parallel rows, the iridescent blue tiles sparkle and gleam, their colors fluctuating between shades of violet, emerald, and indigo according to the light. Kusama’s signature polka dots are expressed here in white orbs of varying sizes, the tiles laid in concentric circles, forming vortexes that draw the viewers into the artist’s cosmic universe. The effect is akin to the shimmering night sky, dotted with moons and planets, near and far. The present work makes an enchanting counterpoint to the yellow and red version at the New York Botanical Garden: the blue pumpkin represents the yin to the yellow one’s yang, the Venus to its Mars, the night to its day.

 

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Small Unique Pumpkins

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Pumpkin, 1999

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 28 September 2025
Estimated: HKD 2,400,000 – 3,200,000
HKD 3,556,000 / USD 457,070

Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 | Pumpkin 南瓜 | Modern & Contemporary Day Auction | 2025 | Sotheby’s

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin, 1999
Acrylic on canvas laid on wood, mixed media
25 x 22.6 x 20.1 cm (9 7/8 x 8 7/8 x 7 7/8 inches)
Signed, titled in Japanese and dated 1999 (on the underside)

At the brink of the third millennium, Yayoi Kusama found herself at the crossroads of a new era for the avant-garde. In 1999, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo hosted a showing of Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958–1968, accompanied by In Full Bloom: Yayoi Kusama, Years in Japan, two major retrospectives comprising over 200 works from the artist’s practice before and after her time in New York. Executed in the same year is Pumpkin, an accumulation of the artist’s oeuvre across five decades up till that point, a testament to her pioneering creative vision and style.

Fully hand-painted in her signature pattern and palette, Pumpkin stands as an exceptional example of Kusama’s prolific small-scale pumpkin sculptures. Core to her artistic legacy, the pumpkin is deeply connected to the artist’s past growing up near a seedling farm in Matsumoto, Nagano, where the plump gourd was commonly found. Voluptuous and unyielding, Kusama found solace in the sturdiness of the pumpkin. The iconic motif began to emerge as early as the 40s, with her first sculptures created in the 70s. During the 1991 Venice Biennale, the artist personally handed out small pumpkins to visitors, sparking the spread of the pumpkin as her own artistic symbol and allowing it to grow as she herself gained increased exposure. Presently, the pumpkin has transcended to be one of the most universally recognizable images in contemporary art and visual media, considered as the artist’s alter ego with various renditions of sizes, colours and mediums which aptly represented her growth and development of her artistic journey.

Encompassing the precious pumpkin is a hand-painted box, reminiscent of the structure of works by two of Kusama’s dear muse and friends during her time in New York, American artists Donald Judd and Joseph Cornell. Kusama and Judd met in 1959 and, both finding common ground as poor emerging artists trying to find their footing and experiment with their art in New York city, formed an intimate and profound friendship. As neighbors, the two worked and lived closely with each other, with Kusama partly influencing Judd to create his box pieces when the latter was lacking inspiration, to which the present piece echoes in its structural form. Kusama then met Joseph Cornell in 1962, who, as an older, more experienced and established presence, highly cared for and supported her personal and artistic growth. An unlikely bond between two artists from opposite ends of the world, their connection too left an undeniable mark on each other’s lives. Kusama considers her relationship with Cornell platonically passionate, and once sent him a note, “You & me—birds of a feather.” Following his death in 1972 and subsequently Judd’s in 1994, the present pumpkin takes shape with an encompassing box, tracing the iconic structure of their respective frame and box sculptures, suggesting a homage to two extremely influential figures during a pivotal time of Kusama’s life.

Kusama’s self-obliteration is also a significant and highly personal visual and philosophical theme throughout her artistic development. The encapsulating box and the pumpkin within are meticulously painted with obliteration dots through inverting palettes of black and yellow, interplaying the visual dimensionality of the piece and transforming the dotted box into a separate spatial plane — a unique self-obliterated room. Originating from Kusama’s past struggle with her visions since childhood and later struggles with her mental health, the obliteration of matter and the concept of self majorly defined her artistic language. At once aware of her identity and the surrounding space, the pumpkin springs into life as a self-aware subject, reflecting Kusama’s interpretation of mortal existence and the ever-changing nature of the universe, ultimately making her own spiritual peace within it.

“Polka dots are the symbol of the spiritual peace and love, and the starting point of all of [my] hopes and thoughts. While there is Dots, there is Kusama.”

As one of the most recognized and respected faces of contemporary art, Yayoi Kusama has embodied the avant-garde across over eight decades of relentless breakthrough and creation ranging from pumpkins and nets to breathtaking installations. Nesting within the obliteration box, Pumpkin combines Kusama’s profound identity as an artist who found salvation and resilience in her art amidst her struggles and chaos, a diaristic witness of her inspiring development and artistry.

 

Pumpkin, 1991

Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 6 April 2023
Estimated: HKD 650,000 – 950,000
HKD 2,286,000 / USD 291,206

Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 | Pumpkin 南瓜 | Contemporary Day Auction | 2023 | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929)
Pumpkin, 1991
Acrylic on ceramic
10.3 x 12 x 10 cm (4 x 4 3/4 x 4 inches)
Signed, titled in Japanese and dated 1991 on the underside

 

Untitled, 1985

Christie’s New-York: 18 November 2022
Estimated: USD 40,000 – 60,000
USD 189,000

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Untitled | Christie’s (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Untitled, 1985
Mixed media
10.1 x 11.4 x 11.4 cm (4 x 4 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Yayoi Kusama 1985’ (on the underside)
Executed in 1985. This work is unique

 

Pumpkin, 1991

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 27 May 2022
Estimated: HKD 1,500,000 – 2,500,000
HKD 2,142,000 / USD 272,880

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Pumpkin | Christie’s (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Pumpkin, 1991
Mixed media sculpture
11.5 (H) x 16.5 x 15.3 cm (4 1/2 x 6 1/2 x 6 inches)
Signed and dated ‘Y. Kusama 1991’, titled in Japanese (on the underside)

 

Pumpkin, 2000

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 2 December 2021
Estimated: HKD 1,800,000 – 2,800,000
HKD 4,375,000 / USD 561,372

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Pumpkin | Christie’s (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Pumpkin, 2000
Mixed media sculpture
25 (H) x 19 x 14 cm (9 7/8 x 7 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches)
Signed and dated ‘YAYOI KUSAMA 2000’, titled in Japanese (on the underside)

“What appealed to me most was the pumpkin’s generous unpretentiousness. That, and its solid spiritual base.”

Pumpkin, 1992

Christie’s New-York: 1 October 2021
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 500,000
USD 500,000

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Pumpkin | Christie’s (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Pumpkin, 1992
Wood box, cloth, acrylic and mixed media
16.5 x 20.6 x 17.8 cm (6 1/2 x 8 1/8 x 7 inches)
Signed, titled in Japanese and dated ‘YAYOI KUSAMA 1992’ (on the underside)

“The appearance of the pumpkin is too adorable…
What attracts me to her is that she doesn’t wear any cover-up, unashamed of her plump belly, and she has a tenacious spiritual power.”

 

Self-Obliteration, 1999

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 25 May 2021
Estimated: HKD 2,000,000 – 3,000,000
HKD 5,250,000 / USD 676,311

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929), Self-Obliteration | Christie’s (christies.com)

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Self-Obliteration, 1999
Mixed media sculpture
23.7 (H) x 18.2 x 15.2 cm (9 3/8 x 7 1/8 x 6 inches)
Signed, dated and titled ‘YAYOI KUSAMA SELF-OBLITERATION 1999’ (on the underside)

“By obliterating one’s individual self, one returns to the infinite universe.”