US-based pop art sculptor Claes Oldenburg, known for his giant work depicting everyday objects such as hamburgers, lipstick and electric plugs, has died aged 93.

Oldenburg’s sculpture was critically acclaimed and widely popular over his long career, often striking a lighthearted tone and seen by millions in open-air sites such as public squares.

Oldenburg was born in 1929 in Stockholm and moved to New York in 1956.

‘Geometric Apple Core’ by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) in San Francisco, California. Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP

The Pace Gallery, which represented him, confirmed his death, hailing him as “one of the most radical artists of the 20th century (for) his inextricable role in the development of pop art”.

It said he had been recovering from a fall and passed away at his home and studio in New York. 

People walk past the ‘Plantoir, Blue’ sculpture at the Channel Gardens in Rockefeller Centre. Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images North America/Getty Images via AFP

Other monumental objects that Oldenburg sculpted include ice cream cones in New York, a clothespin in Philadelphia that marked the 1976 bicentennial of the US Declaration of Independence, and a cherry balanced on a spoon in Minneapolis.

“My intention is to make an everyday object that eludes definition,” he was quoted as saying in The New York Times.