Claes Oldenburg Oldenburg was born in Stockholm in 1929 and grew up in Chicago. He attended Yale and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In the late fifties, he was using found objects; he liked the crudeness and grime of the streets in which he lived. His used everyday objects that were thrown away and reformed them so they took on a different meaning.

In 1961, Oldenburg rented a store on the lower east side of New York which he named 'The Store'. He created pieces made from plaster and colored enamel such as shoes, food, and street signs. In 62 he began to make large soft sculptures out of materials like foam and rubber. One of his most well known pieces is 'Floor Cake' which was shown at the Green Gallery with bad reviewsfrom critics. Afterwards Oldenburg decided to rethink his work.

After much traveling, including Europe, Oldenburg moved back to New York in 1965. He continued to use soft material but was more interested in hard mechanical devices such as mixers, fans, and pipes. His work took on a sexual comparison to human forms; Oldenburg said, "The erotic or the sexual is the root of art."

In 1965, he explored the idea of large outdoor monuments. Oldenburg comments: "One day I combined landscapes and objects, only I didn't change the scale. I had a drawing of a vacuum cleaner and another of Manhattan - and I just superimposed them. The result was automatically a giant vacuum cleaner because the city held its scale - it didn't become a miniature city. Somehow it worked." Four years later he made seven foot tall 'Geometric Mouse' from steel and aluminium. It was his attempt at "academic ism of the formalist." He continued using steel in a large format and in 1976 built 'The Clothespin' which stands in the Center Square in Philadelphia. His work, he said "originates in actual experience however far my metamorphic capacities may carry it," More information later on his work in the 80s and 90s.