Art highlight: Yayoi Kusama comes to Riehen with a big retrospective!

Art highlight: Yayoi Kusama comes to Riehen with a big retrospective!

In the world of art there is hardly anyone who has as much charisma as Yayoi Kusama. From September 2025, the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen will be showing a comprehensive retrospective of this fascinating Japanese artist for the first time in Switzerland. Again Schwarzälder messenger reports, the exhibition is being created in close collaboration with Kusama and her studio and offers an exciting overview of her more than 70 years of artistic work.

From the earliest days to new works never before seen in Europe, the exhibition includes over 300 works, including the iconic Infinity Nets and Accumulations, as well as the famous Narcissus Garden from 1966, which will be presented in a new staging in 2025. A special highlight for all Kusama fans will be the Infinity Mirrored Room: Illusion Inside the Heart, which is also part of the exhibition. The whole thing extends across ten exhibition halls and will integrate the adjacent park into an artistic experience.

An artist with history

Yayoi Kusama, born on March 22, 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan, is one of the most influential artists of today. She began her artistic career with exhibitions at the age of 16, and in 1957 she emigrated to the USA, where she found many prominent supporters, including Georgia O'Keeffe and Donald Judd. Her passion for art is evident in various media: from painting to sculpture to installations and even fashion. The diversity of their forms of expression is also highlighted in the retrospective, which illuminates the different facets of their artistic identity.

As the Beyeler Foundation added, the exhibition will not only feature early works by Kusama, but also one of her most famous Infinity Mirror Rooms, known for exploring repetitive patterns and their signature points. Over the years she has contributed significantly to the development of genres such as installation and happening and is now a central figure in the international art scene.

Joint projects in Europe

The retrospective in Riehen is just the beginning. Collaborations with the are also planned Ludwig Museum in Cologne, where the exhibition will take place from March 14th to August 2nd, 2026, and with the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, which offers exhibition spaces for Kusama's works from September 11th, 2026 to January 17th, 2027. These projects demonstrate the global relevance and influence that Kusama has on art.

Tickets for the retrospective are currently not available, but anticipation is rising with the news that Kusama is presenting a real firework of creativity that will captivate not only art lovers. As she says: “When we erase nature and our bodies through dots, we become part of the unity of our environment.” A thought that you can let sink in deeply while looking at the works of this extraordinary artist.