Coosje van Bruggen
| Coosje van Bruggen | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
June 6, 1942 Groningen, Netherlands |
| Died | January 10, 2009 (aged 66) Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Nationality | Dutch-American |
| Known for | Sculpture |
Coosje van Bruggen (June 6, 1942 – January 10, 2009) was a sculptor, art historian, and critic. She collaborated extensively with her husband, Claes Oldenburg.
Born to a physician in Groningen, van Bruggen studied history of art at the University of Groningen. From 1967 to 1971, she worked at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. There she worked with environmental artists like Doug Wheeler, Larry Bell, and the members of the Dutch avant-garde. Until 1976, van Bruggen taught at the Academy for Art and Industries in Enschede. In 1978, van Bruggen moved to New York, in 1993 she became a United States citizen.
She worked with her husband, sculptor Claes Oldenburg, since 1976. Her first work with Oldenburg came when she helped him install his 41-foot Trowel I on the grounds of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo. They were married in 1977. Together Oldenburg and van Bruggen produced three decades of monumental sculpture that van Bruggen would call Large-Scale Projects, with their first piece created as a team being Flashlight (1981), a huge outdoor sculpture at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In Los Angeles, Collar and Bow - a 65-foot metal and fiberglass sculpture in the shape of a man's dress shirt collar and bow tie, designed for a spot outside Walt Disney Concert Hall - was stalled and eventually canceled because of technical problems and escalating costs. In 1988, her work along with Oldenburg Spoonbridge and Cherry was commissioned by the Walker Art Center, and became a permanent fixture of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden as well as an iconic image of the city of Minneapolis. Their final joint work, fabricated in Turin, Italy, was Tumbling Tacks (2009), designed for the Kistefos Sculpture Park in the countryside north of Oslo.
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