Claes Oldenburg

Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles

Acquired from the above by the present owner

“Dora’s childhood fantasies caused her to live in a world of her own, roller-skating patterns or playing “haunted mansion” all day in deserted garages.” — Coosje van Bruggen, Character description for Il Corso del Coltello (Celant Germano; Dieter Koepplin; Mark Rosenthal, Claes Oldenburg: an Anthology, New York, 1995, p. 426)

Apart from being a sculptor of the excessiveness of objects, Claes Oldenburg created many works on paper throughout his life as a way to conceive his ideas. Some like Sleazy Dora Dancing with an Innertube relate to the avant-garde, experimental and multi-media performances that he produced with his second wife, Coosje van Bruggen. In this work he represents one of the characters of Il Corso del Coltello (The Course of the Knife), a project which was staged in Venice, Italy, in collaboration with the architect Frank Gehry and the curator Germano Celant. Featuring the monumental sculpture Knife Ship, curious characters like the dancer Sleazy Dora filled the stage of the production with playfulness and effervescence. In this gestural drawing, the multiplicity of the wavy and free-flowing charcoal lines as well as the pastel colors that fill the page illustrate the motion and dream-like characteristics of the artists’ surreal character. This work, that immortalizes the ground-breaking 1985 performance, embodies Claes Oldenberg’s exceptional imagination as one of the most innovative artists of the last centuries.