Pumpkin (YY), Kusama 231

A pumpkin from the seed fields

Yayoi Kusama was born on March 22, 1929, in Matsumoto, in Nagano Prefecture, into a family of merchants who owned a plant nursery and seed farm. She began drawing pumpkins in elementary school. The pumpkins that later filled her work trace to a childhood visit to a large seed-harvesting ground with her grandfather. Pumpkins, she said, may not inspire much respect, but she was 'enchanted by their charming and winsome form' and their 'generous unpretentiousness.'

From about the age of 10 she experienced hallucinations of dots, flowers, pumpkins and patterned fabric that seemed to come alive, speak to her and envelop her. She called the experience 'self-obliteration.' The dots and nets that cover Pumpkin (YY) come straight out of that vocabulary: the gourd is built from columns of black dots, and the background is an irregular net like those in her Infinity Net paintings.

A guide to her pumpkins dates her first pumpkin artwork, Kabocha, to 1946 and notes that pumpkins entered her dot works in the 1980s. By the mid-1990s the motif was her calling card, and prints such as this one let it travel far beyond the paintings and sculptures.

From New York to a Tokyo hospital and back to the world stage

Kusama trained for a year at the Kyoto City University of Arts in nihonga, a Japanese painting style. She left Japan at 27, saying its society was 'too small, too servile, too feudalistic, and too scornful of women.' After a year in Seattle she arrived in New York in 1958, where she made her Infinity Net paintings and soft sculptures and, in the late 1960s, staged happenings in which nude participants were painted with polka dots.

She returned to Japan in 1973 to an unsympathetic reception. In 1977 she checked herself into Seiwa Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Shinjuku, Tokyo, and lived there by choice for the rest of her life, working in a studio a short distance away. She is often quoted as saying, 'If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago.'

A wave of retrospectives in the late 1980s and 1990s revived international interest, beginning with a survey in New York in 1989. In 1993 she filled the Japanese pavilion at the Venice Biennale with a mirrored room of small pumpkin sculptures, presiding over it in color-coordinated magician's attire. The next year a 2.5-meter fiberglass Pumpkin, yellow with black spots, was installed on a pier on the island of Naoshima. A typhoon destroyed it in 2021, and it was reinstalled in 2022.

Kusama died at a hospital in Tokyo on August 14, 2026, at the age of 97.

1996: a run of small pumpkins

Pumpkin (YY) was made three years after the Venice pavilion that turned the pumpkin into Kusama's emblem. In the same year she took up a residency at the Mattress Factory that produced two infinity rooms, Infinity Dots Mirrored Room and Repetitive Vision, which remain on view there.

It belongs to a group of six 1996 pumpkin screenprints, each about 22.8 x 29.8 cm in an edition of 120. A Tokyo print gallery's archive of the catalogue lists three upright versions, Pumpkin (YT), (GT) and (RT), as numbers 228 to 230, and three horizontal versions, Pumpkin (YY), (GY) and (RY), as numbers 231 to 233. Auction catalogs record that Pumpkin (YY) was printed by Okabe Tokuzo in Tokyo on Arches wove paper. The sources reviewed do not explain the letters in the titles.

How to know it

The print shows a single squat pumpkin with a short stem, filling most of a horizontal sheet. The gourd is yellow and patterned with columns of black dots; the ground behind it is dark and covered with an irregular yellow net. One dealer article describes the pumpkin as orange; catalog photographs show it as yellow.

Genuine impressions are signed, titled in Japanese characters, dated and numbered in pencil in the lower margin. One example sold in 2025 was inscribed '92/120 1996 Yayoi Kusama.' Catalogs list it as Kusama 231 in the artist's prints catalogue raisonne. One London catalog notes that 17 proofs were printed in addition to the 120 numbered impressions.

Measurements vary slightly between catalogs. The image is given as 228 x 298 mm (9 x 11 3/4 in.) and the sheet as 325 x 400 mm (12 3/4 x 15 3/4 in.) in a December 2024 London catalog; a 2025 US catalog gives the image as 23 x 30 cm and the sheet as 32 x 40 cm (12 3/4 x 15 5/8 in.). Collectors should check the full margins, the pencil inscriptions and the paper against a reliable catalog entry.

Recent sales

Because 120 impressions exist, Pumpkin (YY) appears at auction regularly. In August 2024 impression 91/120 was offered in a prints sale in the UK with an estimate of £20,000 to £30,000. On October 24, 2024, another impression was offered at auction in London, and a print market tracker records a hammer price of £32,000 for the work that month.

On December 10, 2024, impression 33/120 sold at auction in London for £38,400 including the buyer's premium. On February 12, 2025, impression 92/120 sold at auction in the United States for $35,560 against an estimate of $25,000 to $35,000; the sale house named it a leading lot of the sale. The same tracker records a further sale in October 2025 at a much lower level, with a hammer price it gives as £7,612; that record is not detailed enough to list as a price here.

The prices in pounds are reported as stated and are not converted. Only the 2025 sale, which was conducted in dollars, appears in the price history below.

The numbers

Medium

Screenprint in colors on Arches wove paper

Dimensions

Image about 22.8 x 29.8 cm (9 x 11 3/4 in.); sheet about 32.5 x 40 cm (12 3/4 x 15 3/4 in.)

Catalogue raisonne

Kusama 231

Edition

120, plus 17 proofs according to one catalog

Printer

Okabe Tokuzo, Tokyo

Timeline

1. Mar 22, 1929

   Yayoi Kusama is born in Matsumoto, Nagano, into a family that runs a plant nursery and seed farm.

2. 1946

   Kusama makes Kabocha, described as her first pumpkin artwork.

3. 1958

   Kusama arrives in New York after a year in Seattle.

4. 1973

   Kusama returns to Japan.

5. 1977

   Kusama checks herself into Seiwa Hospital in Tokyo, where she will live for the rest of her life.

6. 1989

   Her first critical survey, a retrospective in New York, revives interest in her work.

7. 1993

   Kusama fills the Japanese pavilion at the Venice Biennale with a mirrored room of pumpkins.

8. 1994

   A 2.5-meter yellow-and-black Pumpkin is installed on a pier on Naoshima.

9. 1996

   Kusama makes Pumpkin (YY), a screenprint in an edition of 120, printed by Okabe Tokuzo in Tokyo.

10. 1996

    A residency at the Mattress Factory produces two permanent infinity rooms.

11. 2005

    A new edition of her prints catalogue lists Pumpkin (YY) as number 231.

12. 2021

    A typhoon destroys the Naoshima Pumpkin; it is reinstalled in 2022.

13. Aug 13, 2024

    Impression 91/120 is offered at auction in the UK, estimated at £20,000 to £30,000.

14. Oct 24, 2024

    An impression is offered at auction in London; a market tracker records a £32,000 hammer price that month.

15. Dec 10, 2024

    Impression 33/120 sells at auction in London for £38,400 including premium.

16. Feb 12, 2025

    Impression 92/120 sells at auction in the United States for $35,560.

17. Aug 14, 2026

    Kusama dies in Tokyo at 97.

The world in 1996

• Jan 11, 1996

  Ryutaro Hashimoto becomes prime minister of Japan.

• Feb 27, 1996

  Pokemon Red and Green are released in Japan for the Game Boy.

• Mar 13, 1996

  A gunman kills sixteen pupils and a teacher at Dunblane Primary School in Scotland.

• Mar 23, 1996

  Taiwan holds its first direct presidential election.

• May 11, 1996

  ValuJet Flight 592 crashes in the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 aboard.

• Jun 4, 1996

  Europe's Ariane 5 rocket explodes about forty seconds into its maiden flight.

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 (YY), Kusama 231 is number 63 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 (56 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Kusama's family grew and sold seeds; the pumpkins in her art trace to a childhood visit to a seed-harvesting ground with her grandfather.
• Pumpkin (YY) is one of six 1996 pumpkin screenprints in the catalogue, numbers 228 to 233: three upright and three horizontal, all in editions of 120.
• Kusama lived by choice in a Tokyo psychiatric hospital from 1977 until her death in 2026, walking to a studio nearby to work.
• At the 1966 Venice Biennale she tried to sell mirrored spheres from her installation Narcissus Garden for 1,200 lire (about $2) each until the organizers stopped her.
• Her outdoor Pumpkin on Naoshima was swept away by a typhoon in 2021 and reinstalled in 2022.