Claes Thure Oldenburg Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Oldenburg Claes (Stockholm, 1929) Claes Oldenburg studied literature and art history at Yale University and then art at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1950-54. In 1956 he moved to New York, where he met numerous performance artists, becoming one of the major figures in the field of performances and happenings of the 1950s and 1960s. Read the full biography

Oldenburg Claes (Stockholm, 1929) Claes Oldenburg studied literature and art history at Yale University and then art at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1950-54. In 1956 he moved to New York, where he met numerous performance artists, becoming one of the major figures in the field of performances and happenings of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1959 the Judson Gallery in New York exhibited a series of his images, mostly monstrous human figures and everyday objects. In the 1960s he began creating large monuments for various cities, such as the one installed at Yale University in 1969, entitled “Lipstick on Caterpillar Tracks.” In the 1970s and 1990s Oldenburg and van Bruggen collaborated with architect Frank Gehry, breaking down the boundaries between sculpture and architecture. In 1969 he held a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; in 1995 the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum organized a retrospective of the artist and in 2002 the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York presented a retrospective of drawings by Oldenburg and van Bruggen.