Guy Hepner Gallery

Yayoi Kusama Mushrooms For Sale

Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama - Mushrooms, 1995, Etching

Mushrooms, 1995

Etching

11 3/8 x 8 5/8 in 29 x 22 cm

About this work

Mushrooms, a 1995 etching by Yayoi Kusama produced in an edition of 75, demonstrates the artist's remarkable ability to invest unlikely natural forms with the full weight of her philosophical and psychological vision. Measuring 11 3/8 by 8 5/8 inches — a compact, intimate format — this work brings together Kusama's characteristic dot-patterning with the biomorphic, rounded forms of mushrooms in a composition that feels at once playful and strangely otherworldly. The etching medium, with its fine incised lines and rich tonal range, allows for a delicacy of mark-making that distinguishes these works from Kusama's bolder screen prints. In Mushrooms, hatched and cross-hatched passages interact with the artist's signature dots to create a surface of considerable complexity, the fungal forms rendered as simultaneously botanical and alien. There is a long history in both psychedelic culture and Japanese folk tradition of mushrooms as threshold objects — gateways to altered states of consciousness — and Kusama's treatment subtly activates this resonance. Produced during a period of prolific printmaking activity in the mid-1990s, Mushrooms belongs to a group of etchings that stand slightly apart from Kusama's pumpkin and flower series, testifying to the breadth of her visual curiosity. The edition of 75 is among the more restricted in number from this period, making it particularly desirable for collectors seeking works that combine rarity with the distinctive, intimately incised quality of the etching medium.

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Edition & Provenance

Year
1995
Medium
Etching
Edition
Edition of 75
Mushrooms

About Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama Prints For Sale

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.

Kusama's Signature Motifs: Dots, Nets, Pumpkins, and Flowers

The visual world Kusama has created across her long career rests on a small number of obsessively repeated motifs:

  • Dots — polka dots covering surfaces, objects, environments, and her own body; the dot is Kusama's most fundamental formal unit and the motif most directly connected to her childhood hallucinations. Dot prints span the full arc of her career and remain the most accessible entry point into her edition market.
  • Infinity Nets — her first mature breakthrough; the obsessive network of repeating loops that anticipates Minimalism while remaining utterly personal. Net prints and works on paper from the 1960s are among the rarest and most historically significant objects in her output.
  • Pumpkins — bronze and fibreglass sculptures of comic gravity and formal authority that began appearing in the 1990s and have become among the most beloved objects in contemporary sculpture. Pumpkin prints and multiples are among the most actively traded works in her edition market.
  • Flower Ball — large-scale sphere compositions made of dense, repeating flower motifs; among her most distinctive and immediately recognisable works in print and sculpture form
  • Infinity Mirror Room imagery — works referencing or documenting her immersive installation environments; rare and highly sought

Yayoi Kusama Paintings For Sale

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.

Yayoi Kusama Print Editions: What to Know

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.

What to Look For When Buying Yayoi Kusama Art

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.

Yayoi Kusama Art For Sale at Guy Hepner Gallery, New York

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.

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