“We wanted to link the suburban, urban and highway cultures in California together rather than separate them,” Christo told Smithsonian magazine’s Anika Gupta in 2008. Shortly after moving to the United States, the pair embarked on a years-long effort to construct Running Fence, a 24.5-mile-long swath of white, billowing curtains of fabric that rippled over the rolling hills of northern California for two weeks in September 1976. The couple settled down in New York City with their son, Cyril, in 1964. Following brief stints in Prague, Vienna and Geneva, he moved to Paris, where he met Jeanne-Claude in 1958, reports Christianna Silva for NPR. Previously, reported the Guardian, their artworks simply carried Christo’s name-“apparently because they thought it would be easier for one artist to become established.”Ĭhristo studied at the National Academy of Arts in Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia. The pair started collaborating in 1961, but Jeanne-Claude was only credited for her equal share in their efforts as of 1994. Jeanne-Claude, who was born in Morocco on the same day as her future partner, often said, “Both of us at the same hour, but, thank God, two different mothers,” according to the Guardian’s Christopher Turner. Each work was ephemeral, designed to last just a few weeks or days before disappearing.Ĭhristo attends the presentation of his installation The Floating Piers on June 16, 2016, in Sulzano, Italy.īorn on June 13, 1935, in Gabrovo, Bulgaria, Christo Vladimirov Javacheff was known professionally by his first name. The artist financed his installations by selling preparatory sketches and scale models. In 2016, he oversaw the installation of Floating Piers, a nearly two-mile-long, bright yellow floating walkway that connected a northern Italian island to the mainland, as Jeff MacGregor reported for Smithsonian magazine at the time.Ĭreating such enormous works required millions of dollars, as well as planning, patience and jumping through countless bureaucratic hoops, writes William Grimes for the New York Times. “Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s artwork brought people together in shared experiences across the globe, and their work lives on in our hearts and memories.”įollowing Jeanne-Claude’s death in 2009, Christo continued executing their shared artistic vision. “Christo lived his life to the fullest, not only dreaming up what seemed impossible but realizing it,” says his office in a statement. The couple also wrapped parts of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in black, covered Paris’ Pont Neuf bridge and installed a giant orange curtain between two Colorado mountain slopes. These projects included “wrapping” Berlin’s Reichstag Museum in a silvery, shroud-like fabric using vivid pink floating fabric to transform eleven islands in Miami’s Biscayne Bay into giant lily pads and wrapping a coastline in Australia with 1 million square feet of fabric and 35 miles of rope. Together, Christo and Jeanne-Claude realized more than 20 ambitious outdoor artworks. Christo, the Bulgarian-born conceptual artist who created large-scale fleeting art installations with his collaborator and wife, Jeanne-Claude, died of natural causes at his New York City home on Sunday.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |