Christo & Jeanne-Claude 1935-2023

Christo was born in Bulgaria in 1935, and went on to establish himself as a renowned artist in several other countries over his lifetime. He met and began collaborating with his wife Jeanne-Claude in Paris, where the two endeavored to make art accessible to everyone, not just to the elite few in established museums and galleries. From his earliest wrapped projects to the more monumental outdoor undertakings he completed with Jeanne-Claude, Christo’s art transcended both limitation and expectation to achieve what most would have considered impossible. In an effort to change the way people perceive their everyday objects and surroundings, Christo spent his career calling attention to places and things by concealing them or highlighting the negative spaces within them. He was a pioneer of environmental art, and the purpose of his work was always meant to be its fleeting nature, a moment in time to be experienced first-hand and cherished in memory alone.

Over a career that spanned five decades, Christo and Jeanne-Claude conceived and executed transformative outdoor installations that encouraged their viewers to feel, question, and often physically interact with the work they saw.  With an artistic mission that offered “revelation through concealment,” they were legendary for their large-scale environmental projects such as The Gates, in which they transformed New York’s Central Park, and Floating Piers, a 1.9-mile-long walkway across the water of Lake Iseo, Italy, among other feats. For their massive art projects, many of which took several years to complete and included the carefully orchestrated convincing of government officials, judges, environmental groups, and landowners, Christo and Jeanne-Claude never accepted grant funding and always returned their projects’ spaces in pristine condition once the temporary exhibitions came to a close. They believed that the entire journey to completing each work, permits and government negotiations included, was just as much a part of the artistic process as the finished impact itself.