Born in Matsumoto, Japan in 1929, Yayoi Kusama began her artistic education at the
Kyoto
School of Arts and Crafts.There, she studied Nihonga, a
style of formal, traditional Japanese painting that emerged in the Meiji period (1868–1912).
Following six solo exhibitions in Japan during her early artistic career, Kusama moved to
New York in 1958,
inspired by the
rise of Abstract Expressionism in the United States. She was one of the first Japanese
artists of her generation to
make this move, and her early mobility, combined with her openly acknowledged
history of mental illness, contributed to a highly visible, eccentric public persona.