Acrylic and fabric on canvas

22.5 x 16 cm. 8 7/8 × 6 1/4 in.

Signed in English and dated on the reverse
PROVENANCE
Important Private Collection, Asia

This work is accompanied by a registration card issued by Yayoi Kusama studio

Eternal Blossoming: Flower of Life Nourished by Courage
Significant Representative of Yayoi Kusama's Early Pieces : Poppy

“One day, after gazing at a pattern of red flowers on the tablecloth, I looked up to see that the ceiling, the windows, and the columns seemed to be plastered with the same red floral pattern. I saw the entire room, my entire body, and the entire universe covered with red flowers, and in that instant my soul was obliterated and I was restored, returned to infinity, to eternal time and absolute space. This was not an illusion but reality itself. I was shocked to see to the depths of my soul.”
——Yayoi Kusama

American art critic Gordon Brown once said, “Americans think of Japanese girls as hothouse flowers, Kusama surprises them. She is rugged and strong—a veritable human dynamo of creative energy and artistic achievement.” In 1959, the artist who broke through the shackles of foreign identity and gender boundaries became a blockbuster in New York, the most active art centre in the world. Not only did she compete with the important Western artists at that time, but she also became the first female artist who independently represented Japan at the Venice Biennale in 1993. At the present moment, more than 90 influential institutions around world have been collecting Kusama's works. She is far more beyond one of the most famous contemporary art pioneers in the world. After her cross-border cooperation with Louis Vuitton, BMW, and other brands, she has become an absolute trend benchmark in the world. This autumn auction will present Yayoi Kusama's rare and self-explanatory work that firstly appears at the auction–Poppy, which features the classic red flower as the protagonist, combining Kusama's classic artistic vocabulary from “infinity net”, “polka dot”, “collage” and “blossom”.

Flower of True Red Originating from Childhood

Yayoi Kusama's depiction of the “flower” motif can be traced back to her sketch Untitled in her teens. During her childhood, Kusama suffered from loneliness in the conservative and repressed Japanese society because of her parents' neglection. The flower field of her grandfather who ran the wholesale of plant seeds, however, became the exit to her salvation. Accompanied by nature for years, Kusama gradually had the illusion of flowers flickering and whispering in her ears which greatly influenced Kusama's later creations.

In her confused days of youth, American artist O‘Keeffe was Kusama's spiritual comfort. In 1955, she came across O ‘Keeffe's album of paintings, in which the huge red poppy unfurled freely like the petals of a woman's body. Such an intense sensory beauty deeply attracted her. After Kusama's arrival in the United States, O'Keeffe offered her a lot of assistance, including introducing her several American art agents. It is this story of mutual comprehension and support between women that has led to the generation of “polka-dot queen.” The red poppy is gorgeous, yet delusion-inducing, representing Kusama's source of inspiration and self-expression: as early as in the 1960s, she published the soft sculptures of red poppies and appeared on the cover of American magazine Art Voices. In addition, she has repeatedly named her paintings of “red flowers” as Self-portrait. Throughout Kusama's career, she has been blossoming like the red poppy in her consistent, and revolutionary artistic innovation of this motif to overcome her childhood trauma and reach a reconciliation with herself.

Rebirth from the Ground: the Tenacious Flower of Life

Poppy was finished in 1982. Kusama, who was already well recognized in the United States, was maliciously criticized by the conservative media when she returned to Japan in 1970, being attacked as a “flower of heresy”. Despite the consistent criticism, Kusama insisted on artistic creation and finally in the 1980s, she broke through the ground like a blossoming flower, winning back her own honour: in 1982, she held the biggest solo exhibition after returning to Japan in Tokyo Fuji TV Gallery; in 1985, she wore a red dance dress, freely dancing in Tokyo's Kuhonbutsu Jyoshinji Temple, setting off a “Kusama whirlwind.” Therefore, Poppy is a witness of her life and career at that time: she was like a charming and athletic poppy, regardless of the limitations of her age, proudly blooming and singing the song of life that belongs to her own.

In this work, the flowers suggest the red dance dresses in the grass. With the wavy skirts elegantly gathered together, black polka dots are interspersed among them, seeming like the poppy seeds in the dance. Above the straight flower stems, green ovals stand in lines like a polka dot array of stem and leaf cells, delivering an infinite proliferation power of life. However, the dark background seems to denote the quiet and heavy land, silently supporting everything in the world. It connects the fresh green leaves of the poppy by the white “infinite net”, showing the intimate relationship between creatures in the nature. The triangular “infinite network” in the leaf shape is the thin network lines seen on plants when Kusama was young, which signifies a spiritual link of self-melting. If the viewer's eyes follow the winding and undulating lines in the painting, it seems that they will be captured and deeply immersed in the mysterious order of the cosmos.

The more interesting fact is that Poppy is not only Kusama's representative “red flower”, but also the presentation of her collage techniques that she began creating in 1975. The blue jagged fabric with white polka dots is collaged around the edges of the painting, creating a sense of three-dimensional layering, as if a blue sky watching over the poppy. This special combination of multi-media materials undoubtedly highlights the rarity of the work. The artist herself also cherished it and emphasized it by publishing its print form in the same year of creation.

Price estimate:
HKD 3,000,000 – 4,000,000
USD 384,600 – 512,800