Claes Oldenburg

Claes Oldenburg was born in in Sweden in 1929 and moved to the US with his family in 1936. In 1950, Oldenburg became a US citizen and shortly after attended art school at Yale and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1956, Oldenburg went to New York, where he initially became interested in Allan Kaprow and his “Happenings”.  In the early 1960s, he created room-sized environments filled with drawings on scraps of cardboard (The Street) and sculptures of food and consumer goods created from pieces of muslin soaked in plaster (The Store). The black-and-white drawings shown at UMMA relate to themes from The Street, while the sculpture Slice of Pie may actually have been included in The Store. With The Store and other plaster and paper maché pieces, Oldenburg first pushed pop-art into the realm of sculpture.  The sorts of pieces he put into these exhibitions formed a standard for pieces in years following.  In 1963 Oldenburg, with his then-wife Patty Mucha as the skilled seamstress, began using vinyl, a unique idea at the time, to create ‘soft sculptures’. 

In 1965, Oldenburg began creating the enormous public sculptures he is most known for. Many of the drawings he created during this time were sketches for sculptures, most of which never materialized. The content of these sculptures often ranged from lipstick to ice bags. Similar to other Pop Art of the day, these oversized sculptures highlighted the absurdity of American culture.

- Colin Beresford

Note: We were unable to locate most of the exact works that appeared in the exhibition. We have used approximations or substitutes for all except Three Figures and One Bus