Striding Figure

Striding Figure is a color screenprint by Swedish-born American artist Claes Oldenburg. It was printed using enamel inks, in black and white in 1962 and with color in 1971. This impression is pencil signed and editioned A.C. XIII. It was included in the 1971 portfolio Conspiracy: The Artist as Witness published by David Godine and the Center of Constitutional Rights in New York. Styria Studio printed the edition on CM Fabriano wove paper measuring 28-1/2 x 20-3/4 inches. References for this image include Axsom 76; and number 21 in Printed Stuff: Prints, Posters, and Ephemera by Claes Oldenburg: A Catalogue Raisonné‚ 1958-1996 by Claes Oldenburg, Richard H. Axsom, and David Platzker.

This image was originally created as a poster for a performance by the Aileen Passloff Dance Company on 20 January 1962. Oldenburg published an edition of 150 in 1971 for the portfolio Conspiracy: The Artist as Witness. It was a collaboration by thirteen printmakers to help fellow artist Pearl Hirshfield raise funds for the Chicago Seven.

Claes Oldenburg, painter, sculptor, and printmaker, was born in Stockholm in 1929. He studied literature and art history at Yale University from 1946 to 1950, and then enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Oldenburg moved to New York in 1956, where he continued his studies while working at the library of the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration. During this time, he began turning pliable materials such as paper and fabric into everyday objects.

In the 1960s, Oldenburg founded his own production company, Ray Gun Theater, and produced posters for fellow artists. He moved to Los Angeles in 1963, searching for what he called “the opposite of New York.” It wasn't long before his sculptures of everyday objects, now in steel, concrete, and other solid materials, took on the monumental proportions he is known for.

Oldenburg became a renowned artist and his sculpture can be viewed in numerous metropolitan cities in the United States and abroad.