As a young, aspiring artist, Kusama greatly admired Georgia O’Keeffe, and even wrote to her to ask for advice. ‘I’m only on the first step of the long difficult life of being a painter. Will you kindly show me the way?’ she asked. O’Keeffe wrote back, warning that ‘in this country an artist has a hard time making a living.’ She neverthless advised Kusama to come to America and show her work to as many people as she could.
In her mid-twenties, Kusama did just that. Reacting against what she regarded as her parents’ old-fashioned customs and morals, she decided to seek freedom and fame abroad. She moved to New York, where she lived between 1958 and 1975. ‘America is really the country that raised me,’ Kusama has said.
