Pop Art Artist Claes Oldenburg Died

Born in Stockholm in 1929, Claes Oldenburg worked as a police reporter in Chicago when he was young. After a transfer to a desk job, he lost interest in the profession. So he went to New York in 1956 to become an artist. In dark basements, Oldenburg first organised happenings that mirrored the dirty life on the city streets. Soon his attention fell on the consumer world with its ever-expanding range of goods, and the artist had found his subject. The multiple documenta participant quickly became famous for his monumental sculptures of tools and other everyday objects, including, for example, his 12-metre-high pickaxe on the banks of the Fulda in Kassel.

Claes Oldenburg elevated sculpture to an important means of expression in Pop Art, which had previously been mainly small-format prints and paintings. Just as he mirrored street life in his happenings, he did the same in a humorous way with his sculptures and consumer objects: They shaped the second half of the 20th century and had an unchangeable influence on people's lifestyles and attitudes. Some works, such as Cupid's Span in San Francisco, were created in collaboration with his wife and artist Coosje van Bruggen (1942-2009). Yesterday, 18 July 2022, Oldenburg passed away in New York City at the age of 93, and with him one of the greatest artists of our time.