1929-2022

Son of a Swedish diplomat on mission in the United States, Claes Oldenburg studied at the universities of Chicago and Yale before adopting the US nationality and settling in New York. In 1961 he opened a small shop on the Lower East Side where he sold all the objects he made, somewhat secretively, in wire and papier-mâché. The interest in the everyday, the banal, or even the vulgar explains Oldenburg’s aversion to the Abstract Expressionism then in vogue – which he considered an elitist and too personal style –, and also explains why the artist approached the recently formed hordes of Pop Art in his most ironic side: the same one that started out with mass culture to end up criticizing, from within, American capitalism. Heir in his own way of Duchamp and Picasso, and akin – also in his way – to contemporaries like Warhol and Lichtenstein, Oldenburg will be remembered for the colorful sculptures – or rather installations – he created with his partner Coosje van Bruggen: ice cones, badminton feathers, and clothespins multiplied in size and filling plazas around the world to make us think about how strange the everyday can be.