Artist: Claes Oldenburg (1929 - )
Nationality: Swedish-American
Movement: Pop Art
Media: Painting
Influences:

Biography:
Claes Oldenburg was born in Sweden in 1929 and became an American citizen in 1953. He attended Yale University and then studied at the Art Institute of Chicago while working as a reporter and illustrator. Oldenburg moved to New York in 1956 and joined a group of artists who were united in their distaste for Abstract Expressionism. Two years later, he began experimenting with happenings and environments based on the New York City lifestyle and atmosphere. In 1961, Oldenburg opened “The Store,” where sold plaster sculptures of food products and other domestic items. His work in this genre of sculpture made him a leader of Pop Art. He also is known for his large-scale sculpture, primarily focusing on this genre after 1976.

Artworks in Museum Collections: (40)
Click the artwork titles below to see actual examples of artwork or works of art relevant to works by Claes Oldenburg.

Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Notes by Claes Oldenburg (Los Angeles: Gemini G.E.L., 1968), 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Untitled (Kassel), between pgs. VI and VII, in the book Notes by Claes Oldenburg (Los Angeles: Gemini G.E.L., 1968), 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Untitled (Punching Bag), between pgs. II and III, in the book Notes by Claes Oldenburg (Los Angeles: Gemini G.E.L., 1968), 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Untitled (Ice Cream Cones), between pgs. IV and V, in the book Notes by Claes Oldenburg (Los Angeles: Gemini G.E.L., 1968), 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Untitled (Fire Plug), between pgs. V and VI, in the book Notes by Claes Oldenburg (Los Angeles: Gemini G.E.L., 1968), 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Untitled (Sneaker Lace), between pgs. IX and X, in the book Notes by Claes Oldenburg (Los Angeles: Gemini G.E.L., 1968), 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Untitled (Body Buildings), between pgs. X and XI, in the book Notes by Claes Oldenburg (Los Angeles: Gemini G.E.L., 1968), 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Untitled (City as Alphabet), between pgs. XI and XII, in the book Notes by Claes Oldenburg (Los Angeles: Gemini G.E.L., 1968), 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Untitled (Drum Set), between pgs. XII and XIII, in the book Notes by Claes Oldenburg (Los Angeles: Gemini G.E.L., 1968), 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Untitled (New Pasadena Museum), between pgs. III and IV, in the book Notes by Claes Oldenburg (Los Angeles: Gemini G.E.L., 1968), 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Untitled (Kneeling Building), between pgs. VIII and IX, in the book Notes by Claes Oldenburg (Los Angeles: Gemini G.E.L., 1968), 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Untitled (Geometric Mouse), between pgs. VII and VIII, in the book Notes by Claes Oldenburg (Los Angeles: Gemini G.E.L., 1968), 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Untitled (Tar Pits), between pg. XIII and the Notes page, in the book Notes by Claes Oldenburg (Los Angeles: Gemini G.E.L., 1968), 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Landscape with Noses, 1975
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Sailboat and Hat, 1975 - 1976
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Museum, 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Marmont, 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Punch Bag, 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Disks, 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Plug, 1965
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Museum, 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, P.O.P. Park, 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Letters, 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Los Angeles, 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Ice Bag -- Scale B, 1971
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Tea Pot, 1975 - 1976
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Landscape with Noses, 1975
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Smoke & Reflections, 1975
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Wedding Souvenir, 1966
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Soft Toilet #3, 1972
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Profile Airflow, 1969
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Study 1 for Floating 3-Way Plug, 1976
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Study 2 for Floating 3-Way Plug, 1976
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Soft Toilet #2, 1972
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Soft Toilet #1, 1972
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Soft Toilet #1, 1972
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Ice Cream Cones, 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Mouse Traps, 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Mickey Mouse, 1968
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco -
Claes Oldenburg, Working proof 6 for Floating 3-Way Plug, 1976

Artnews Articles and Exhibition Information: (29)
Click on any of the links below to read about artnews or exhibitions related to Oldenburg

Indianapolis Museum of Art: Pop Impact - From Johns to Warhol
Considered controversial when it first emerged in the 1950s and 60s, Pop Art broke the rules by shunning abstraction in general and returning to recognizable subject matter, yet the subjects Pop artists chose—Coke bottles, billbo...
Museum of Contemporary Art, LA and the Geffen Contemporary: F A Room of Their Own: From Rothko to Rauschenberg
This presentation together with A Room of Their Own: From Oldenburg to Gober will span more than 50 years of contemporary art. The exhibition is co-organized by MOCA chief cu...
Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum: Claes Oldenburg: Drawings, 1959-1977 and Claes Oldenburg with Coosje van Bruggen: Drawings, 1992-1998, in the Whitney Museum of American Art
Oldenburg gained international fame for his Pop Art sculptures that transform common objects into whimsical constructions, using surprising and unexpected materials. His drawings reveal the creative process behind his public pieces. Oldenburg uses...
Detroit Institute of Art: POP ART: PRINTS AND MULTIPLES FROM THE DIA COLLECTION
By relying on humor, audacity, color and several new technologies, these artists redefined and broadened the spectrum of art. This exhibition surveys the accomplishments...
ASU Art Museum: The Eye of the Collector: Works from the Lipman Collection of American Art
The exhibition will include works by Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, David Smith, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Lucas Samaras, Robert Morris and will...
: Art Dealer Monolith Leo Castelli Dies at 91
...
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Oldenburg and van Bruggen on the Roof
On view will be three very large, intensely colored works, on which the husband and wife sculptors have collaborated in recent years: Architect’s Handkerchief,...
Georgia Museum of Art: Large Drawings from the Arkansas Arts Center Foundation
Most of the artists represented were active in the 1980s and 1970s and include the photo-realist Ira Korman, Nancy Grossman, Diane Edison, ...
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard: Works from Renaissance to 20th-Century Highlight How Artists and their Workshops Used Both Sides of the Sheet
The unusual display allows viewers to trace the creative process as an artist sketched from one side of the sheet to the other, to see how works were copied by assistants in Renaissance workshops, and to understand the increasing shift toward a co...
Sasol Art Museum, University of Stellenbosch: Horst Janssen: Early Etchings 1958 – 1964
He was a pupil of Paul Wunderlich, from whom he learned etching. His art was influenced earlier by Edvard Munch and later by ‘art brut’ and Jean Dubuffet. His life was marked by numerous marriages, outspoken opinions, alcoholism, and selfl...
Detroit Institute of Art: Beyond Big: Oversized Prints, Drawings and Photographs
In the last half of the 20th century, advances in technology have permitted artists to create prints and photographs of unprecedented scale. With equipment and paper now being produced in sizes that rival dimensions that only paintings and some dr...
Guggenheim Hermitage Museum: American Pop Icons: Works by Eight Key Artists
In a statement, Thomas Krens, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, said of the Pop exhibition: "American Pop Icons is the third major presentation at the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum as part of its ongoing mission to bring many of the wor...
Old Boys Network: Very Cyberfeminist International
Cyberfeminism is not a game without borders, but a dealing with borders that is taken seriously; a work on the boundaries of that 'contested zone', in which the so-called real and virtual diverge; which mines utopias of transgression and works to ...
Cantor Arts Center Stanford University: Food, Frogs, and Fido: Works on Paper by David Gilhooly
Gilhooly studied at the University of California at Davis in the 1960s, and ceramic work by him will be on view in the exhibition "Fired at Davis: Figurative Ceramic Sculpture by Robert Arneson, Visiting Professors, and Students at UC-Davis, from ...
National Gallery: Encounters: NEW art from OLD
The National Gallery has always been a resource for artists, and the Collection offers many examples of how artists in other times have wrestled with traditi...
Everson Museum: Central New York Selects
Participants were allowed to choose from all media including paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, sculpture, and ceramics, but were limited to works of art that were not currently displa...
Columbia Museum of Art: POP IMACT! From Johns to Warhol
Included in the exhibition, are icons of the '60s by 17 notable artists including Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Tom Wesselman, Robert Indiana, Marisol, Edward Ruscha, George Segal and Wayne Thiebau...
Neuberger Museum of Art: Inner Eye: Contemporary Art from the Marc and Livia Straus Collection
In the 1960s, Marc and Livia Straus, residents of Chappaqua, New York, began collecting contemporary works which, at the time they were made, provoked the response, Is this artNULL ...
Palazzo Ducale: Arti and Architettura: 1900 - 2000
A utopian adventure, encroaching sometimes into “archisculpture”, whose protagonists – artists and architects from Kazimir Malevich to Vladmir Tatlin, from Antonio Sant'Elia to Giuseppe Terragni, from Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to Piet Mondrian, f...
Milwaukee Art Museum: POP Impact: from Johns to Warhol
Pop Impact! From Johns to Warhol looks at Pop imagery from different perspectives, encouraging visitors to examine the movement's defining characteristics elements such as scale and seriality as well as such atypical Pop approaches as the...
Chinati Foundation: Open House Celebration to Inaugurate Large-Scale Work in Fluorescent Light by Dan Flavin
Artist Donald Judd (1928-1994) founded the Chinati Foundation, an independent museum for contemporary art in far West Texas, in 1986. Chinati's mission is to present ...
National Gallery of Art: Best Impressions: 35 Years of Prints and Sculpture from Gemini G.E.L.
From its beginnings, Gemini has introduced cutting-edge methods of fabrication to realize the visions of its invited artists, said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. We are pleased to present these innovative works by some of t...
Dia Center for the Arts: Playback: A Retrospective of Work by Robert Whitman
Pioneering in its use of media as art material, Whitman's performance work is among the most influential of its period. His involvement with multi-media performance-based works began in 1960 when, together with fellow artists Allan Kaprow, Jim ...
Ketterer Kunst: Spring Auctions Begin With Modern Art on Paper in Hamburg
Nu pour Cleveland was made 14 years earlier. This signed engraving of 1932 by Henri Matisse is more than just an appreciation of femininity. It is estimated at DM 15,000 - 17,000. Another outstanding work of the auction is Marc Chagalls Piro...
Perry Rubenstein Gallery: Sturtevant: Push and Shove
The exhibition will include an installation of Marcel Duchamp’s 1200 coal bags, approximately ten ready-made objects, and the film Nude Descending the Staircase produced in 1967. In the 24th Street space, the artist will premiere a seven-channel v...
Kunsthaus Bregenz: Gary Hume: The Bird Had a Yellow Beak
In the eighties, Gary Hume (born in 1962 in Kent, England) became a star of the Young British Art movement virtually overnight with his "Doors" series. The series comprises some 50 works to date. The Kunsthaus Bregenz shows a representative select...
Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University: The Changing Garden: Four Centuries of European and American Art
The Changing Garden presents nearly 200 works—prints, drawings, paintings, and photographs—by more than 100 artists. The exhibition includes great names from art history, such as Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Jean-Honoré Fr...
Oakville Galleries: Walk Ways: At Centennial Square and in Gairloch Gardens
Artists: Francis Alÿs, Eleanor Antin, Janine Antoni and Paul Ramirez-Jonas, Mowry Baden, Jim Campbell, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Hamish Fulton, Sharon Harper, Martin Kersels, Tom Marioni, Matthew McCaslin, Curtis Mitchell, François Mo...
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: Roy Lichtenstein: All About Art
This major exhibition features approximately eighty paintings and drawings by Lichtenstein (1923–1997) and traces the artist’s fascination with the painted image and the act of art-making over his nearly forty-year career. Best known as a pop arti...

Further Artwork and Information:

Claes Oldenburg Online
Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen
OLDENBURG: FRONTISPIECE
WWW Pop Art: Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg - Artist Painting Prices, Art Appraisal, Artist Paintings [AskART.com]
Claes Oldenburg: An Anthology, Bio
Wikipedia: Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg
Amazon.com: Video: Claes Oldenburg (1996)
Claes Oldenburg artist portrait, brief biography and art

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