Yellow Pumpkin is an art object created by a famous and extravagant Japanese female artist Yayoi Kusama. It welcomes visitors on a dock of the Naoshima art-island and is one of its symbols. The second pumpkin made by her is a red pumpkin with polka dots which is installed in the center of the island.

Unique, bright and original Yellow Pumpkin demonstrates the main features of the artist’s creativity: «polka dots» pattern or net of infinity nets and its repeats. Yayoi has always been interested in natural forms. She started to paint pumpkins at the end of the 1940s. In a certain period of her life she gave it up, but she came back to that theme in the 1980s. Some art admirers and connoisseurs call Yellow Pumpkin a godmother of pop-art.

Kusama, just like many other Japanese people, appreciates the connection with nature. The desire for communing with nature and reaching harmony is the main sense of her works. The endless, meditative nature of her creativity is an attempt to overcome her own phobias. She has lots of them. Her works are connected with the inner reality, fears, hallucinations and are deeply psychological in this or that way. Yayoi Kusama calls herself an «intrusive artist». As for the pumpkins, Yayoi Kusama has an installation which is called «All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins».

Her first acquaintance with pumpkins was the most important experience of her childhood. As far as she has psychological problems, she finds something incredible in common things and represents it to the audience masterfully. Yayoi Kusama says: «I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art».

The artist is 91 years old now. She lives and works in Tokyo and is under medical observation. She is the first Japanese woman who was awarded the Premium Imperiale. Her name takes the first position in the rating of the most expensive contemporary female artists. She made a huge contribution to the art development of Naoshima island.