(Matsumoto, Nagano, 1929)

The 94-year-old Japanese artist is a unique figure who continues to arouse the admiration of art historians for her work, career, and for being the inspiration and precursor of a multitude of artistic currents over the last seven decades.

Drawing, sculpture, painting, performance, happenings, writing… Yayoi has worked in a multitude of artistic disciplines until she went beyond the figure of an artist to become a reference icon in the artistic and cultural universe in addition to being the most sought-after living artist in the world.

Precursor of pop art, minimalism and feminist art, notably influencing world-renowned artists such as Andy Warhol himself. Her time in New York, where she moved in the 50s, was where she achieved her greatest successes.

It is impossible to summarize her entire long career in one article, but we will highlight three disparate and obsessive elements of her work: The first is the moles, about them she said: “Our Earth is just one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos.

Polka dots are a path to infinity. When we erase nature and our bodies with polka dots, we become part of the unity of our environment.” They are treated with exquisite color and extreme originality.

The second fixation comes from a trauma she suffered as a child; in a hallucination she saw how the flowers spoke to her and they became one of the recurring themes of her works.

The third is pumpkins. This vegetable has also been one of the recurring elements in a multitude of works always decorated with its famous polka dots.

A small woman, always wearing a red wig, who has lived in a psychiatric institution in Japan since 1977, where she entered voluntarily, since she has suffered from hallucinations and obsessive-compulsive disorder since childhood. At 94 years old, she continues to work, with “infinite obsession”, in her workshop in the Shinjuku district (Tokyo) -very close to the Seiwa hospital-, where she goes almost every day.

Strength, color, patterns, originality and above all, a source of inspiration for many artists are some of the adjectives that we can list to describe her work through which Yayoi wants to seek healing and overcome her fears.