The Sprengel Museum in Hanover is launching what may be its largest exhibition project to date this week. On Saturday, September 6, the museum opens "Niki. Kusama. Murakami – Love you for Infinity," bringing together works by three international art superstars for the first time. Museum Director Reinhard Spieler expects the blockbuster exhibition to draw 200,000 visitors.
The exhibition commemorates the 25th anniversary of Niki de Saint Phalle's generous donation to the museum. A quarter-century ago, the artist gifted nearly 400 works to the institution, making the Sprengel Museum home to the world's largest collection of her art. This spectacular selection of Niki's works will be displayed alongside pieces by two other art world giants who have similarly explored the relationship between art and commerce throughout their careers.
The 96-year-old Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama was born just one year before de Saint Phalle, who died in 2002. Japanese artist Takashi Murakami represents a younger generation but shares thematic connections with both artists. Together, these three creators form an unlikely but compelling artistic dialogue spanning generations and continents.
Yayoi Kusama has transformed personal struggle into artistic triumph through her signature polka dots and pumpkin motifs. Can a pumpkin really be that expensive? A leather handbag shaped like a pumpkin, bright yellow and covered with black dots, sells for $151,000 at Christie's auction house. As a sculpture, such a pumpkin can fetch $7.7 million.
For Kusama, these dots – which she calls "Polka Dots" – represent symbols of love, hope, and eternal happiness that the artist desperately seeks. The pumpkin forms provide her with spiritual strength that helps her cope with her mental illness. Kusama suffers from anxiety disorders and depression, and since 1977 has voluntarily lived in a psychiatric facility in Tokyo. During the day, she works in her studio, creating the mesmerizing worlds with their famous engulfing patterns.
Kusama describes her art as a dialogue between inner torment and creative, healing power. Her Infinity Rooms – one of which visitors can experience at the Sprengel Museum – are mirrored spaces that extend into eternity, born from her hallucinations. In these rooms, viewers are meant to experience peace and friendship with their entire bodies, essentially immersing themselves in the world of healing dots until the self disappears.
Takashi Murakami, 63, creates what he calls the friendliest flowers in the universe, populating the art world with broadly smiling plants and Mr. DOB, a mix of manga character and trademark. "Superflat" is the name of Murakami's artistic concept featuring bright, flat motifs that range from the sublime to manga, without hierarchies and without boundaries between art and commerce.
His art is simultaneously deeply rooted in Japanese tradition, connecting to Edo period painting and incorporating Buddhist motifs while mixing classical elements with pop culture – all produced in Murakami's highly productive art factory called Kaikai Kiki, which roughly translates to "strange yet fascinating."
Murakami collaborates with pop stars like Pharrell Williams and is himself a musician, having formed the group MNNK with rapper JP The Wavy. He serves multiple roles as painter, curator, collector, and entrepreneur, creating expensive collections for Louis Vuitton and producing costly limited editions for collectors worldwide.
Despite his bright, colorful world, Murakami remains a deeply serious artist. He holds a doctorate in Japanese painting from Tokyo University of the Arts and maintains faith that art can change the world. Because he believes that only film and manga currently represent Japan internationally, Murakami wants to make visual arts great again. "When a person stands before a Murakami painting and becomes lost in thought, they have a cultural experience that cannot be compared to any other experience," he explains.
Niki de Saint Phalle could certainly be fierce when necessary, fighting against her father's dominance and for herself and her art – literally taking a rifle in hand. The French-American artist (1930-2002) invented the famous shooting paintings early in her career and became world-famous for her voluptuous, cuddly Nanas – the round, cheerfully colorful, dancing women sculptures. These two sides of her work connect with the other two artists in this surprising trilogue at the Sprengel Museum.
Yayoi Kusama similarly fought against male dominance through happenings and performance art in New York during roughly the same period. Both artists experienced their hippie phases, and sexuality and feminism became themes both could agree upon, as well as the struggle for love and friendship – each expressed in distinctly different artistic languages.
Murakami created pop-colored worlds where the Nanas would have felt at home. Both Niki de Saint Phalle and Murakami wanted to bring art beyond museum boundaries. The playful forms and use of bright colors connect both artists so strongly that Japanese exhibition visitors sometimes mistakenly attribute the garish Niki sculptures to Murakami.
The exhibition "Niki. Kusama. Murakami – Love you for Infinity" runs from September 6 through February 14, 2026, at the Sprengel Museum Hannover. Tickets cost 14 euros (reduced price 10 euros) and can be purchased online through the museum's website or directly at the museum's box office. The usual free Friday admission does not apply to this special exhibition. Only the opening event on Friday, September 5, at 7 PM is free of charge.
