He was known for his monumental sculptures of everyday objects: American pop art artist of Swedish origin Claes Oldenburg died Monday July 18 at the age of 93 in New York, announced one of the galleries of art that represented him.
“He was recovering from a fall and died at his home and studio in New York”said Pace Gallery in a message sent to Agence France-Presse.
Its founder, Arne Glimcher, hailed “one of the most radical artists of the 20th century”who “changed the very nature of sculpture” and which “the influence is still perceptible today”. He liked to represent everyday life and the objects that punctuate it. Hamburgers, an ice cream cone or a clothes peg: these gigantic sculptures have made Claes Oldenburg a world-famous artist. Millions of people have already been able to attend his works in public places.
“Together with his wife and long-time collaborator, Coosje van Bruggen (who died in 2009), Oldenburg carried out more than 40 large-scale public projects all over the world”write Pace Galleries.
A figure of opposition to the war
Among his works, “The lipstick mounted on a tank”, exhibited on the campus of Yale University in the late 1960s, caused a sensation and became a symbol for opponents of the American war in Vietnam. A clothespin, still visible in Philadelphia, where you can read the numbers “76”also marked the bicentennial of the American declaration of independence in 1976.
Born in 1929 in Stockholm, Claes Oldenburg grew up in particular in Chicago, where his diplomat father was Consul General of Sweden. He studied at Yale University, then at the “School of the Art Institute of Chicago”and moved to New York in the 1950s. “Oldenburg came to prominence in New York in the late 1950s and early 1960s when he staged his Happenings – a series of delirious installations and performances inspired by his surroundings”in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Pace Galleries tell in their tribute.
“I’m for an art that mixes with everyday shit and still emerges victorious. I am for art that imitates the human, that is comical, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary.he wrote in his manifesto in 1961. Claes Oldenburg has been the subject of exhibitions at MoMA, the Whitney Museum in New York, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.