Pumpkin

Medium: Bronze sculpture
Year: 1995
Dimensions: 6 x 6.8 x 6.5 cm (2 3/8 x 2 5/8 x 2 1/2 inches)
Edition: 30

Signed in English and dated on the underside

Certificate of authenticity with an artist’s seal issued by Kura Gallery, Tokyo

In 1993, Yayoi Kusama became the first woman artist to singly represent Japan in the Venice Biennale, where she showed Mirror Room (Pumpkin) and gained international fame for her “polka-dot pumpkins” and herself. Among the various forms of pumpkins, the short and chubby pumpkin is very popular. In 2018 and 2019, Kusama’s important solo exhibition at the Forever Museum of Contemporary Art in Kyōto, Yayoi Kusama: Pumpkin Forever, featured on its poster a chubby pumpkin that was almost equal in its width and its height. Pumpkin, as a limited edition of 30 bronze sculptures, was made two years after the Venice Biennale. Its adorable quality is brought out by its modest, short, and chunky form.

The golden shell of Pumpkin gleams with a natural luster. Its chunky body charmingly lowers the visual focus, giving a calm, down-to-earth impression. The pumpkin, with eight ridges on its plump belly, looks like a blooming daisy from the top. Its short stem raises like a trumpet that blows the tune of life. No longer floating on the surface, Kusama’s signature polka dots have been replaced by chiseled black dots as if forged by a blazing fire, or the afterimage of the sun. Robust and humble in texture, the metal pumpkin has a vitality that is much greater than its dainty body.

At a time when resources were scarce, pumpkins were the most common type of food. They accompanied Kusama throughout her childhood, gave her the power to heal at difficult times, and thus are special in the artist’s heart. The polka dot, then, “has the form of the sun.” In this way, everything dissolves into a web of love, existing eternally in harmony. Pumpkin combines the two warmest artistic vocabulary in Kusama’s life, the polka dot and the pumpkin, calling for more inclusiveness and understanding in our society and the harmonious coexistence between human and nature through bronze, a material that has undergone the quenching of flames.

Auction Results

China Guardian Hong-Kong: 7 October 2023
Estimated: HKD 200,000 – 300,000
HKD 240,000 / USD 31,200