He was known for his gigantic-sized sculptures like that of lipstick on the tracks of a tank, exhibited on the campus of Yale University.
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 which 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 AFP. 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 noticeable today“. Burgers, an ice cream cone or an electrical outlet: these gigantic sculptures have made Oldenburg an artist appreciated by critics and the public. His works have often been seen by millions of people in the public places where they were exhibited. Among them, the lipstick on the tracks of a tank, displayed 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, on display in Philadelphia, also marked the bicentenary of the American Declaration of Independence in 1976.
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From the 1970s, he had worked as a duo with his wife, Coosje van Bruggen, who died in 2009. “I am for an art that mixes with everyday shit and still comes out 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 the MoMA or the Whitney Museum in New York, or even at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
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