Claes Oldenburg

Claes Oldenburg (Stockholm, 1929 – New York, 2022) was one of the most influential figures of international Pop Art, renowned for transforming everyday objects into powerful sculptural icons infused with irony, cultural critique, and monumental imagination.

Raised in the United States, Oldenburg emerged on the New York art scene in the early 1960s, developing a radical practice that blurred the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and performance. His early works—often made from soft and unconventional materials—challenged traditional ideas of form, function, and permanence in art.

At the core of his practice is the ordinary object, enlarged, distorted, or rendered flexible: hamburgers, ice creams, household tools, and consumer goods become vehicles for reflecting on desire, mass consumption, and American urban culture. From the 1970s onward, in collaboration with Coosje van Bruggen, Oldenburg created some of the most iconic large-scale public sculptures of the twentieth century, installed in cities around the world.

His works are held in the collections of major international institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Tate Modern in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Today, Claes Oldenburg is regarded as a central figure in Pop Art and as an artist who profoundly redefined the relationship between art, object, and public space.