509 - Claes Oldenburg* (Stockholm 1929 - 2022 New York)

Claes Oldenburg* (Stockholm 1929 - 2022 New York) Ray Gun, 1972 lithograph/paper 75,5 x 57 cm signed Oldenburg, numbered 6/250 SCHÄTZPREIS / ESTIMATE € 250 - 500 STARTPREIS / STARTING PRICE € 250 Claes Oldenburg was born in Stockholm on January 28, 1929, the son of a Swedish diplomat. The family lived initially in the United States and Norway before settling in Chicago in 1936. Oldenburg studied literature and art history at Yale University and subsequently attended classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1950 to 1954. He became a U.S. citizen in 1953. In 1956, Oldenburg moved to New York and became involved in the circle surrounding early happenings and performance art. Works such as The Street (1960) and The Store (1961) combine installation, performance, and sculptural elements with motifs from everyday urban life. In his "Store" project on the Lower East Side, he presented food items, clothing, and everyday objects—crafted from plaster, painted fabric, and papier-mâché—as art. In the early 1960s, Oldenburg developed his famous "soft sculptures": soft, sagging, or distorted versions of objects such as hamburgers, ice cream cones, typewriters, and electrical outlets. The shift from hard to soft, small to gigantic, and useful to useless became the core of his artistic strategy. Through this, he established himself—alongside Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and James Rosenquist—as a defining figure of American Pop Art. From the late 1960s onwards, Oldenburg designed imaginary monuments and realized numerous large-scale sculptures in public spaces. Starting in 1976, he collaborated closely with the Dutch-American art historian and artist Coosje van Bruggen; their joint projects combine everyday objects, architecture, landscape, and site-specific art. Oldenburg died in New York on July 18, 2022. PLEASE NOTE: The purchase price consists of the highest bid plus the buyer's premium, sales tax and, if applicable, the fee of artists resale rights and platform fee. In the case of normal taxation (marked ° at the estimate), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax is added to the sum of the highest bid, the buyer's premium and platform fee. This amounts to 13% for paintings, drawings, graphic works and sculptures and 20% for photographs and all other items. The buyer's premium amounts to 28% in case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.