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 wh

A storefront opened in 1961, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which like any corner shop sold all kinds of everyday articles, but were really made of wire and papier mâché. Starting with that fleeting experience, Claes Oldenburg devoted himself t

The Guardian   Charles Darwent   Pop artist famed for his ‘soft sculptures’ and outsized monuments to everyday objects Had the ideas of Claes Oldenburg been realised, Piccadilly Circus would have had as its hub not a 19th-century sculpture of Eros but a cluster of 8m-high orange lip