Tools As Art: The Hechinger Collection

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Claes Oldenburg, Three-Way Plug, 1965
offset lithograph with airbrush
32 x 24 1/2 in.

The son of a diplomat, Claes Oldenburg was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1929. He was raised in Chicago, becoming a naturalized American in 1953. A master of transformation, Oldenburg is considered the classic Pop artist, garnering attention for both his soft sculptures and his large-scale public projects based on everyday objects. Oldenburg received his B.A. from Yale University in 1950. He then worked in Chicago as a newspaper reporter while studying at the Art institute of Chicago from 1952 to 1954. In 1956 he moved to New York, where he and his wife and frequent collaborator, Coosje van Bruggen, currently reside. Initially interested in drawing and painting, he became involved with downtown "happenings" and environmental artworks. In 1959 he had his first show at the Judson Gallery, along with Jim Dine. The following year he concentrated on drawing store goods and incorporating used consumer goods in his art. His handmade objects were sold in The Store and the Ray Gun Manufacturing Company, both part of his studio shop on East Second Street, from 1961 to 1962. The first of his signature oversize soft sculptures appeared in 1963 for his "theater of objects." Start with his "Proposed Colossal Monuments" in 1965, he produced plans for city sculptures of quotidian objects that combine humor with a serious, often political edge. Over thirty have been realized as large-scale public monuments; the giant Lipstick, for example, was installed at Yale. Since 1970 his work has been exhibited throughout the UNited States ad Europe, including shows at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Nelson-Adkins Museum in Kansas City, as well as the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf, and the Tate Gallery in London. In recent years Oldenburg has returned to soft fabric sculpture and continues his long-standing relationship with Gemini G.E.L. in printmaking and cast sculpture. In 1994 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center.