
Fauna
1 work

Watermelon, 1986
Screen print
18 1/8 x 20 7/8 in 46 x 53 cm
Edition of 75
Watermelon, a 1986 screen print by Yayoi Kusama produced in an edition of 75, presents a strikingly different subject within the artist's long exploration of organic, biomorphic forms. Measuring 18 1/8 by 20 7/8 inches, the work brings Kusama's characteristic polka dot vocabulary to bear upon the rounded, striated form of a watermelon — a fruit that, like her celebrated pumpkins, carries associations of abundance, nature, and the rhythms of growth and harvest. Produced in 1986, Watermelon belongs to a period when Kusama was steadily rebuilding her international profile. The screen print medium, employed with her characteristic technical precision, allows for both the flat, saturated color fields that suggest the watermelon's deep green exterior and the bold polka dot pattern that covers its surface. The dots, as always in Kusama's work, function as units of infinity — marking the distance between the observed, specific object and the boundless, undifferentiated cosmos she has always sought to invoke. As a fruit-based work from the mid-1980s, Watermelon occupies a distinctive position in Kusama's print output, representing an extension of her organic-form vocabulary beyond the pumpkin that dominates so much of her later work. The relatively limited edition of 75 gives the print a particular desirability, while the subject's bold graphic appeal ensures its continuing resonance for collectors across generations.
Price on Application

Watermelon (Kusama 91) · Yayoi Kusama · Bonhams · 2022-06 · $38,681

Watermelon · Yayoi Kusama · Bonhams · 2020-12 · $28,747

Watermelon (Kusama 91) · Yayoi Kusama · K Auction · 2025-07 · $19,469


Yayoi Kusama prints for sale at Guy Hepner Gallery in New York include Infinity Net editions, pumpkin screenprints, dot works, Flower Ball multiples, and the full range of her extraordinary print output — representing one of the most consistently in-demand bodies of work in the contemporary edition market. For collectors seeking Yayoi Kusama art for sale, Guy Hepner at 177 Tenth Avenue, New York offers expert guidance, authenticated works across all her major print series, and access to a market that has demonstrated exceptional sustained strength.
Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929, Matsumoto, Japan) is the highest-selling living female artist in the world and one of the most instantly recognisable visual presences in contemporary art — an artist whose dots, nets, pumpkins, and Infinity Mirror Rooms have achieved a cultural ubiquity that coexists, without diminishing, with the genuine psychological intensity from which her work emerged. Kusama began making art as a child as a means of processing the hallucinations she experienced — flowers speaking to her, the self dissolving into fields of pattern and repetition — and the therapeutic impetus has never separated itself from the formal achievement. The work is not illustration of pathology but its transformation into aesthetic proposition.
Kusama received traditional Japanese painting training before moving to New York in 1958, where she became a conspicuous and somewhat isolated figure in an avant-garde largely indifferent to her practice. Her Infinity Net paintings — monumental canvases covered in an unbroken weave of looping marks applied with obsessive labour — anticipated the Minimalist investigation of serial mark-making while remaining intensely personal, each loop a unit in an accumulation too vast to resolve into pattern.
The visual world Kusama has created across her long career rests on a small number of obsessively repeated motifs:
Kusama's auction record stands at $7,109,000 for Infinity Nets (TW) at Christie's, with multiple major Net canvases from the late 1950s and 1960s achieving $5,000,000+ at Sotheby's and Christie's. An Infinity Nets canvas from 1959 achieved $5,098,000 at Christie's in November 2021. She has held the record for the highest auction result achieved by a living female artist for many years. Her major paintings — particularly early Net works and large-scale Infinity environments — are held primarily in institutional collections or by committed long-term private collectors and rarely come to market.
Her print editions — featuring signature dot and pumpkin imagery — are among the most actively traded in the contemporary edition market, with strong global demand across price points. Kusama has worked with publishers in Japan and internationally to produce editions across all major print media: screenprints, lithographs, woodcuts, and etchings.
Print prices range from $8,000–$15,000 for smaller open-style editions through $50,000–$200,000+ for rare signed limited editions featuring pumpkins, infinity net patterns, or dot works in high demand colourways. Works produced in collaboration with Ota Fine Arts and other authorised publishers carry the strongest provenance.
Motif: Pumpkin works and infinity net prints consistently outperform generic dot compositions. Flower Ball works carry strong demand. Early net works on paper, if available, are among the rarest and most historically significant objects in her output.
Edition size and signature: Small-edition signed prints carry significant premium over open editions. Certificates of authenticity from Ota Fine Arts or the artist's studio are essential for any significant acquisition.
Colourway: Yellow and black pumpkin works (echoing her iconic Naoshima installation) carry premium. Red and white, gold, and silver colourways in dot and net works also command strong demand.
Condition: Kusama's prints are typically produced on quality substrates, but UV protection and stable storage are critical to long-term value preservation.
Provenance: Works with direct gallery provenance from Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro, or Zwirner hold value most reliably.
Kusama's work is held in permanent collections at MoMA, the Whitney Museum, Tate, the Centre Pompidou, the Guggenheim, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Hirshhorn Museum, and The Broad in Los Angeles. A landmark joint retrospective toured Tate Modern, the Centre Pompidou, the Whitney, and MoMA in 2012. She continues to produce work daily from her studio in Tokyo.
Guy Hepner offers authenticated Yayoi Kusama art for sale with full provenance documentation from our gallery at 177 Tenth Avenue, New York. We provide expert guidance on acquisition, free and confidential valuations for those wishing to sell, and access to a global network of collectors actively seeking her work across all media and price points. Whether you are seeking Yayoi Kusama prints for sale in a specific motif or colourway, or exploring her broader edition output, Guy Hepner is the right starting point.