In 1957-58, after he moved to New York's Lower East Side, Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929) began making collages he has described as "mostly done in an uncontrolled and intuitive dream mode." Made from found, printed imagery, the Strange Eggs are enigmatic, surrealistic, and vastly different from the Pop art of the 1960s for which he soon became famous.

These collages are characterized by self-contained forms, or "eggs," the artist made by melding cut fragments of photographic illustrations. While many of the pieces are unrecognizable, some original references are discernible: a...