Pumpkin (1982 lithograph & collage)

A painter turns to prints

Kusama exhibited her first prints in 1979. She had come home from New York in 1973 to an unsympathetic Japanese art world, and her work of those years dwelt on death and suffering. The prints went the other way. A 2025 museum survey of her printmaking describes them as rich in color and vivid in motif: pumpkins, dresses, grapes, flowers and butterflies, built from her mesh and polka dots. The same survey argues that an artist whose work was rooted in the proliferation of dots and nets was bound to find her way to printmaking, an art of reproduction.

Pumpkin of 1982 is one of the earliest of these editions. It is number 4 in the catalogue raisonne Yayoi Kusama: Prints 1979-2017, and it appeared as plate 12 in the 1992 book Yayoi Kusama: Print Works. It was printed by Shimo-oka Yoshiaki and published in Nagoya.

The pumpkin was already an old subject for her. Born into a family that ran a plant nursery and seed farm in Matsumoto, she drew pumpkins in elementary school and painted her first in 1946. One cataloger calls the pumpkin 'a self-portrait of sorts, a symbol of comfort, resilience, and whimsical eccentricity.'

The artist in 1982

Kusama was born on March 22, 1929, in Matsumoto, Nagano. From around age ten she had hallucinations of dots, flowers, pumpkins and patterned fabrics that seemed to come alive and envelop her. She left Japan in 1957, reached New York in 1958, and spent the 1960s making Infinity Net paintings, soft sculpture and happenings, including Narcissus Garden at the 1966 Venice Biennale.

Back in Japan from 1973, she became so depressed she could not work. In 1977 she found a doctor using art therapy in a hospital setting, checked herself in, and lived at the Tokyo psychiatric hospital for the rest of her life, working in a studio nearby. 'If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago,' she said. In the years around this print she was also writing: a book of poems and paintings in 1977, her first novel in 1978, and more novels from 1983 on.

Wider fame came later. A 2025 museum survey dates her international debut to 1993, when she represented Japan at the 45th Venice Biennale, and argues that her active printmaking from an earlier stage of her career was a major force behind that acclaim. Kusama died in a Tokyo hospital on August 14, 2026, at 97.

How to identify the 1982 Pumpkin

This Pumpkin is a large sheet. Sale catalogs give the image as 57.7 by 47.7 cm and the sheet as 65.5 by 51 cm, on B.F.K. Rives paper, in an edition of 75. Each impression is signed, titled, dated and numbered in pencil along the lower edge; one catalog notes the title is written in Japanese and the signature reads 'yayoi Kusama 1982.' Both the pumpkin and the background are filled with rhythmic dot patterns.

Kusama made more than one Pumpkin lithograph with collage in 1982, and this is where buyers slip. A much smaller version, with an image of about 15.5 to 15.9 by 22.3 to 22.5 cm on a sheet of 27 by 33.5 cm, was issued in an edition of 100 plus 3 artist's proofs, also from the Nagoya publisher and printer Shimo-oka Yoshiaki, and is cataloged as number 6. Its polka dots come from fabric collage, so one dealer notes they look different on every sheet. Confirm the catalogue number, the edition size and the dimensions before comparing prices.

Condition matters on a 40-year-old work on paper with collage. One impression offered in October 2025 had been recently restored, with a conservation report available. A buyer's guide to Kusama prints advises confirming title, date, dimensions, colorway and catalogue reference, since the same motif appears across many dates and edition structures.

Seventy-five sheets at auction

Impressions of the 1982 Pumpkin surface at auction in Hong Kong, Japan, the United States and Europe. In Hong Kong on November 25, 2018, impression 34/75 sold for HKD 475,000 against an estimate of HKD 120,000 to 220,000. Another, numbered 5/75, was offered in Hong Kong that year with an estimate of HKD 120,000 to 180,000. At an auction in Japan, an impression cataloged as Kusama 4 sold for JPY 6,900,000 against an estimate of JPY 3,000,000 to 5,000,000.

Prices have not moved in a straight line. On February 9, 2023, impression 18/75 sold at auction in Oakland, California, for $17,000, well under its $30,000 to $50,000 estimate. In October 2025 a restored impression was sold at auction in the United States; the result is not public without an account.

In February 2026 an impression described as in excellent condition and from a private collection sold at auction in Luxembourg for €50,100, against an estimate of €50,000 to €100,000; the sale page gives no dollar figure. That result came six months before the artist's death.

Where the prints began

From April 25 to September 7, 2025, the Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art showed Yayoi Kusama Print Works: Repetition and Proliferation, about 330 prints drawn from the artist's collection and from the Matsumoto City Museum of Art in her hometown, which holds one of the world's largest collections of her printworks. A 1982 Pumpkin lithograph with collage was among the works the museum illustrated for the show; its listing does not say which of the 1982 versions it was.

In later decades Kusama returned to printmaking with ukiyo-e woodblock prints of Mount Fuji and large black-and-white screenprints titled Love Forever, and the pumpkin became her signature in every medium, from mirrored rooms to a 6-meter bronze in London. The 1982 lithograph shows the motif at the start of that run, hand-built with collage, in an edition of just 75.

The numbers

Medium

Lithograph in colors with collage on B.F.K. Rives paper

Dimensions

Image 57.7 x 47.7 cm (22 3/4 x 18 3/4 in); sheet 65.5 x 51 cm (25 3/4 x 20 1/8 in)

Catalogue raisonne

Kusama 4 (Prints 1979-2017, plate 4); Print Works (1992), plate 12

Edition

75

Printer

Shimo-oka Yoshiaki

Timeline

1. Mar 22, 1929

   Yayoi Kusama is born in Matsumoto, Nagano.

2. 1946

   Kusama paints her first pumpkin.

3. 1957

   Kusama leaves Japan for the United States, reaching New York in 1958.

4. 1973

   Kusama returns to Japan.

5. 1977

   She enters a Tokyo psychiatric hospital, where she will live for the rest of her life.

6. 1979

   Kusama exhibits her first prints.

7. 1982

   Pumpkin, a lithograph with collage, is printed by Shimo-oka Yoshiaki and published in Nagoya in an edition of 75.

8. 1992

   The print appears as plate 12 in Yayoi Kusama: Print Works.

9. 1993

   Kusama represents Japan at the 45th Venice Biennale.

10. 2017

    Yayoi Kusama: Prints 1979-2017 catalogs the work as number 4.

11. Nov 25, 2018

    Impression 34/75 sells in Hong Kong for HKD 475,000, more than double its high estimate.

12. Feb 9, 2023

    Impression 18/75 sells at auction in Oakland, California, for $17,000.

13. Apr 25, 2025

    A Kyoto museum opens a survey of about 330 Kusama prints, running to September 7, with a 1982 Pumpkin lithograph and collage among its illustrated works.

14. Oct 16, 2025

    A recently restored impression is sold at auction in the United States.

15. Feb 2026

    An impression sells at auction in Luxembourg for €50,100.

16. Aug 14, 2026

    Yayoi Kusama dies in Tokyo at 97.

The world in 1982

• Feb 8, 1982

  A fire at the Hotel New Japan in Tokyo kills 33.

• Feb 9, 1982

  Japan Airlines Flight 350 crashes in Tokyo Bay, killing 24.

• Apr 1, 1982

  Japan introduces the 500 yen coin.

• Jul 23, 1982

  Torrential rain and landslides in Kyushu kill hundreds, most of them around Nagasaki.

• Aug 2, 1982

  Typhoon Bess strikes Japan.

• Nov 27, 1982

  Yasuhiro Nakasone succeeds Zenko Suzuki as prime minister of Japan.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Pumpkin (1982 lithograph & collage) is number 76 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (54 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Kusama exhibited her first prints in 1979, the year she turned 50.
• The 1982 Pumpkin is number 4 in her print catalogue raisonne, one of her earliest editions.
• A smaller 1982 Pumpkin uses fabric collage for its dots, so no two sheets look exactly alike.
• In 2018 an impression sold in Hong Kong for more than double its high estimate; in 2023 another sold in California for $17,000, far under its $30,000 low estimate.
• Kusama's hometown museum in Matsumoto holds one of the world's largest collections of her prints.
• Between 1977 and 1990 Kusama also published poems and eight novels while living in a psychiatric hospital.