Claes Oldenburg — Swedish Sculptor born on January 28, 1929,

Claes Oldenburg is an American sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring very large replicas of everyday objects. Another theme in his work is soft sculpture versions of everyday objects. Many of his works were made in collaboration with his wife, Coosje van Bruggen. Van Bruggen died in 2009 after 32 years of marriage. Oldenburg lives and works in New York... (wikipedia)

My single-minded aim is to give existence to fantasy.
I am for the art of underwear and the art of taxicabs. I am for the art of ice cream cones dropped on concrete.
My struggle has been to return painting to the tangible object, which is like returning the personality to touching and feeling the world around it, to offset the tendency to vagueness and abstraction. To remind people of practical activity, to suggest the sense and not to escape from the senses.
Chicago has a strange metaphysical elegance of death about it.
'Clothespin' was the first city monument on a large scale that could compete with the architecture around it.