On January 5th, 1962, at a dinner party hosted by the dealer Beati Perry, the worlds of Jack Tworkov and Yayoi Kusama collided. Others present at the party included the art critic Clement Greenberg and the Colombian painter Fernando Botero. But it was the “fierce Japanese painter” Kusama who made a lasting impression on Tworkov. Their budding friendship, which has never been critically explored, would soon evolve into a mutual exchange of instinctual and strategic impulses. Tworkov, nearly thirty years her senior, would play a pivotal role in Kusama’s career, advocating for her at a time when contemporaries, critics, and elder statesmen of painting viewed her work with indifference.