Jeff Koons designed the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao’s giant flower-covered Puppy sculpture.
Puppy is a monumental West Highland white terrier assembled from a steel framework, soil, and living plants. Koons created the work in 1992, and it was later installed outside the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, where it became one of the museum’s best-known public artworks.
The sculpture combines the appearance of a domestic dog with the scale and visual impact of a public monument. Its flowers are maintained and replaced as needed, so the work changes somewhat with the seasons.
Puppy is often confused with Maman, the enormous spider sculpture by Louise Bourgeois. Both have appeared at Guggenheim sites, but Puppy is Koons’s flower-covered dog.