Claes Oldenburg is one of the great masters of Pop Art, which he decisively shaped with his installations of oversized, colourful everyday objects, although he never wanted to fully identify with the movement and always sought his own way.
(...) Continue readingClaes Oldenburg – Sheltered childhood; early artistic ambitions
Claes Thure Oldenburg was born on 28 January 1929 in Stockholm, the son of the Swedish Consul General Gösta Oldenburg and his wife Sigrid Elisabeth. Pop Art, in which the Swedish exceptional artist was to play a decisive role in shaping, had not been thought of at that time. His father’s diplomatic profession brought Claes Oldenburg to New York as early as 1930, back to Oslo in 1936, and that same year to Chicago. The first years in foreign English-speaking countries were hard for the young Claes: he felt isolated because of the language difficulty and created fictional refuges with a childlike imagination which he captured in drawings at this early age. Shortly after the Second World War, Oldenburg studied art and English literature at Yale University from 1945 to 1950, as well as a course at the Art Institute at the same time. Whilst studying, he worked as a graphic artist and gathered experience as a journalist, and in 1953 held his first exhibition consisting of satirical drawings.
From painter to sculptor
Claes Oldenburg moved to New York in 1956 where the art world was gripped by a feverish sense of optimism. Here he turned from painting to sculpture and presented large Happenings with artist friends such as Allan Kaprow, George Segal, Lucas Samaras, Jim Dine, and others. It was the beginning of the Pop Art era, but Oldenburg surprisingly did not have an unreservedly positive attitude towards it, despite being considered one of its great masters. He met the increasing commercialisation of art with a certain mistrust even when he was himself naturally happy to be able to make a living from his work. He took the new demand on art to heart: it had to be different, and the works of the Swedish-born artist were different. He did not shy away from bold political statements, protesting, for example, against the war with the installation of a giant lipstick on a tank track.
Artist’s love and master of Pop Art
In 1977, Claes Oldenburg married his second wife, the Dutch sculptor Coosje van Bruggen, and they worked closely until her death in 2009. Their perhaps most well-known work is the ten-meter-high sculpture Inverted Collar and Tie, installed in Frankfurt am Main at the foot of the skyscraper Westendstraße 1 and which takes the form of a tie fluttering upwards, satirising the business suits of those working there. The artist cultivates his close contact with Germany, taking part in documenta four times. As well as the Frankfurt tie, he has installed billiard balls in Münster, an ice cream cone in Cologne, a pickaxe in Kassel and a tap and hose in Freiburg – everything of course larger than life. He makes art for people, not for museums. Despite this, galleries fight over his work. In 2012, Museum Ludwig in Cologne presented a very special exhibition: Claes Oldenburg’s early work was shown for perhaps the last time as severe material wear could prevent the works from being transported and exhibited in the future.
At the age of 93, Claes Oldenburg died in New York on 18 July 2022.
Claes Oldenburg - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
