Yayoi Kusama // Watemelon, 1986

  • Yayoi Kusama, Watermelon, 1986. Screenprint on paper, 46 × 53.5 cm, edition of 75, signed and numbered. Features Kusama’s playful depiction of watermelon forms with bold colour and repetition.
    Watermelon, 1986
    Screenprint on paper, 46 × 53.5 cm, Edition of 75, signed and numbered
    © Yayoi Kusama.

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    Yayoi Kusama’s Watermelon (1986) is a screenprint on paper measuring 46 × 53.5 cm, produced in an edition of 75, each signed and numbered by the artist. The work transforms a familiar fruit into a bold graphic motif, presenting the watermelon with Kusama’s characteristic use of repetition and vibrant colour. At once playful and surreal, the subject reflects her fascination with everyday objects and her ability to reimagine them as part of her wider visual language.

     

    In Watermelon, Kusama elevates a simple natural form into a meditation on pattern and perception. The surface of the fruit, with its rhythmic markings, resonates with her obsession with dots and nets, motifs that recur across her paintings, sculptures, and installations. By isolating and stylising the image, Kusama draws attention to its formal qualities, while also imbuing it with psychological depth.

     

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  • “My desire was to predict and measure the infinity of the unbounded universe, from my own position in it, with dots.”

     — Yayoi Kusama

    This work belongs to a series of editioned prints created in the 1980s, a period when Kusama was expanding her practice through graphic media. As with her larger canvases, Watermelon demonstrates her ability to fuse the ordinary and the infinite, turning an everyday object into a symbol of repetition, obsession, and boundless imagination.