Archivio Conz

Claes Oldenburg ( 1929, Stockholm, Sweden – 2022, New York, USA) was a Swedish-American sculptor celebrated for his playful and monumental reimaginings of everyday objects. A leading figure in Pop Art, Oldenburg brought wit, scale, and material experimentation to the center of postwar sculpture, transforming the mundane into the monumental. Raised in Chicago after his family emigrated from Sweden in the early 1930s, Oldenburg studied literature and art before attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He later moved to New York, where he became immersed in the city’s vibrant avant-garde scene. His early performances and installations, particularly the groundbreaking The Store (1961), merged sculpture, painting, and performance in a gritty storefront filled with handmade replicas of consumer goods. Oldenburg’s signature approach involved crafting soft, oversized versions of familiar items—hamburgers, typewriters, ice cream cones—rendered in vinyl, canvas, or fabric. These “soft sculptures” questioned traditional sculptural values of permanence and monumentality, while satirizing American consumerism. In the 1970s, he began a long and fruitful collaboration with his partner and wife, Coosje van Bruggen, with whom he created some of the most iconic public artworks of the 20th century. Together, they installed large-scale sculptures in cities around the world, including Spoonbridge and Cherry (1985–1988) in Minneapolis and Clothespin (1976) in Philadelphia. These works integrated whimsy with a deep consideration for site, scale, and public space. Oldenburg’s work has been featured in major institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Whitney Museum, and international biennials. His legacy is defined by his ability to infuse sculpture with humor, humanity, and a critical eye on the objects that populate modern life. Through scale, materiality, and irreverence, Oldenburg redefined what sculpture could be—bringing Pop Art into public space and reimagining the ordinary as extraordinary.