Photo/Illutration Yayoi Kusama’s installation featuring polka-dotted yellow pumpkins lined up in a mirrored room at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel on Oct. 31 (Ryo Kiyomiya)

TEL AVIV--A retrospective exhibition dedicated to Yayoi Kusama, one of Japan’s leading avant-garde artists, proved so popular that tickets sold out for months in advance, according to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

“Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective,” the first major exhibition to showcase the works of 92-year-old Kusama in Israel, opened here Nov. 15 and runs until April 23.

Kusama is widely known as the “Queen of Polka Dots.” More than 200 of her artworks, including paintings and installations, were brought together for display in chronological order to trace her footsteps from childhood to her career in New York and later in Japan.

Media representatives were given a preview on Oct. 31.

One installation features polka-dotted yellow pumpkins lined up in a mirrored room.

Kusama shows no signs of slowing down. A painting she completed several months prior to the exhibition is also on display.

Director Tania Coen-Uzzielli expressed her amazement during a news conference that Kusama “is still active and continues to work (with) different materials and different media” after she is well over 80 years old. “I have to say it’s great honor to have this opportunity, (this) exhibition.”

The retrospective also features a painting depicting atomic bombing created in the 1950s.

Shahar Molcho, the curator overseeing the exhibition, noted that Kusama has conveyed “peace and antiwar messages” through her art.

Showing her works in “very tensed context of Israel” also sends “a strong message,” she said.

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