ARCHIV - 21.06.2012, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Köln: Der Künstler Claes Oldenburg nimmt an einer Pressebesichtigung der Ausstellung «Claes Oldenburg: The Sixties» im Museum Ludwig teil. Der Pop-Art-Künstler Claes Oldenburg ist tot. (zu dpa «Pop-Art-Künstler Claes Oldenburg gestorben») Foto: picture alliance / dpa +++ dpa-Bildfunk +++

The pop art artist Claes Oldenburg is dead. Oldenburg died in New York on Monday at the age of 93, said a spokeswoman for the Pace Gallery, which has represented the artist since 1960, the German Press Agency in New York.

The artist recently recovered from a fall in his studio in SoHo, where he also lived. “I was honored to have a great friendship with one of the most radical artists of the 20th century,” gallery founder Arne Glimcher was quoted as saying. “He changed the nature of sculpture from hard to soft and his impact on the art world is still visible today.”

Oldenburg had raised the Pop Art of the 1960s, which primarily took place in prints and paintings, to sculpture and placed consumer objects in a new context in a humorous way. Along with Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, he was one of the greatest representatives of the movement.

Claes Thure Oldenburg was born in Stockholm in 1929, a few years later the family moved to the USA. He studied at Yale and tried his hand as a reporter at the City News Bureau in Chicago, but then attended the Art Institute of Chicago and illustrated for magazines.

After moving to New York in 1953, with American citizenship in his pocket, he experimented with papier-mâché and plaster of Paris in his first shows.