Good condition.
Signed and dated in the lower left.
Signed, titled, dated, stamped, and with dedication on the verso

Minor signs of age-related wear are present in several places.
There is approximately 4 cm of restoration in the left-center area.
There is discoloration to the reverse consistent with age.

Yayoi Kusama's art work registration card

A contemporary artist from Nagano Prefecture, Kusama Yayoi (1929–), has consistently explored the theme of “self-annihilation” throughout her practice since she began creating art. This theme is rooted in experiences of visual and auditory hallucinations she has had since childhood, expressed through repetitive patterns such as nets and polka dots. Aspiring to become a painter from a young age, Kusama studied Nihonga (Japanese-style painting) at the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts (now Kyoto Municipal Dōda High School of Arts and Crafts) in 1948. She then moved to the United States alone in 1957, establishing herself in New York. Her early landmark series**, Infinity Nets,** garnered considerable attention. She continued to develop her unique practice, working across diverse media including sculpture, installation, and performance, while also intersecting with the contexts of 1960s American Pop Art and Minimalism, as seen in works like Accumulation No. 1 (1962) and Narcissus Garden (1966). After returning to Japan in 1973, she has continued to create energetically to this day, standing as an iconic figure representing Japanese contemporary art on the global stage.

The present work, Coral Reef (1954), is a drawing made in the year Kusama held her first solo exhibition in Tokyo. Behind a darkened, fog-like expanse that spreads across the entire picture plane, a coral reef born from Kusama’s inner world is rendered. The images that seem to overflow from within Kusama’s works resonate with Surrealism, which pursued artistic practices liberated from reason, a tendency particularly evident in her early works. This work is a valuable early example by Yayoi Kusama, reflecting a rich yet delicate and melancholic spirit through symbolic dots that anticipate her later motifs, and organic paint bleeds reminiscent of coral branches.