IN MEMORIAM | "I think of a monument as being symbolic and for the people and therefore rhetorical, not honest, not personal." - Claes Oldenburg In memory of renowned Swedish-American Pop artist Claes Oldenburg (1929 - 2022), GRAY looks back with great admiration on the artist's legacy and his relationship to Chicago. Born in Stockholm in 1929, Oldenburg was raised in Chicago where he attended the Latin School and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He quickly rose to prominence in New York in the late 1950s and early 1960s where he met a number of influential artists including Jim Dine, Red Grooms, and Allan Kaprow; These artists would later become key organizers of the Happenings — a hybrid art form incorporating installation and performance art that provided an alternative to Abstract Expressionism which had come to dominate much of the art scene at the time. Oldenburg established roots with GRAY in the late 1960s, and saw his first solo exhibition with the gallery in 1977 in Chicago, the very same year he unveiled the public sculpture, Batcolumn, in downtown Chicago, and married his wife and collaborator, Coosje van Bruggen (1942—2009). Oldenburg's expansive show at GRAY, titled Recent Works and Drawings, included a series of studies that supported the construction of his most iconic public works, such as Typewriter Eraser and Fire Plug. With loose, intuitive marks, Oldenburg's works on paper and small scale fabrications offer profound insight into his sculptural process and limitless imagination. From the 1970s on, Oldenburg concentrated almost exclusively on public commissions, and went on to play an indispensable role in carving out the plastic aesthetic of consumerist commentary quintessential to the 1960s and 70s Pop Art era. To explore more of GRAY's exhibition history, visit our website via the link in bio. Pictured: 1. Claes Oldenburg, Chicago Stuffed with Numbers, 1977; 2. Claes Oldenburg, Typewriter Eraser, 1977; 3. Claes Oldenburg, Study for Fireplug Column, 1977. All artworks featured in the exhibition, Claes Oldenburg: Recent Works and Drawings, at Richard Gray Gallery, 1977.