Claes Oldenburg
artist biography | original signed artworks & limited edition prints for sale

Millions of people have seen the artwork of Claes Oldenburg without even knowing that it is his work. Rather than having had to seek it out in museums, they have simply only had to walk by it. The Swedish-American sculptor is best known for his sculptures in public places, such as the monumental clothespin near City Hall in Philadelphia, an over-sized rubber stamp in Cleveland, and a a giant tube of lipstick on caterpillar tracks at Yale University, where he studied art history and literature from 1946 to 1950. Claes Oldenburg has been honored with many major prizes during his long career, and his work has been showcased by the Whitney, the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Gallery. A member of the Pop Art movement in the 1960s, Claes Oldenburg worked initially with soft sculpture and performance art, but eventually became most famous for his large sculptures of normally small items. Working in such materials as painted steel and fiberglass, he creates remarkable pieces that are sometimes site-specific, such as Spoonbridge and Cherry, a gargantuan spoon with a huge cherry balanced on its rim that is installed across a small pond at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, but often can be relocated; the lipstick, for example, has gone on a tour of several university campuses. Inspired by the artistic potential in everyday items, Claes Oldenburg’s depiction of things that might normally be found cluttering a "junk drawer" elevates them from the commonplace to the monumental, celebrating their design qualities as well as their utilitarian ones and bringing a smile to our faces in the process. Less

Millions of people have seen the artwork of Claes Oldenburg without even knowing that it is his work. Rather than having had to seek it out in museums, they have simply only had to walk by it. The Swedish-American sculptor is best known for his sculptures in public places, such as the monumental clothespin near City Hall in Philadelphia, an over-sized rubber stamp in Cleveland, and a a giant tube of lipstick on caterpillar tracks at Yale University, where he studied art history and literature fr More

United States, 1929 | male artist | Appropriation | Art Fabrication | Happening | Late modernism | Performance art | Pop art | Found Object | Conceptual art | Share on Facebook and Twitter