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CHRISTO
(b. 1935)
Christo is a Bulgarian-born sculptor and artist living in New York. He studied art, sculpture and set design at the Academy in Sophia (1953-56), and at the Kunstakademie, Vienna (1956). In 1958, Christo moved to Paris and in 1964 settled in New York. Christo collaborates closely on all of his projects with his wife Jeanne-Claude.
During his years in Paris, Christo invented the practice of packaging, wrapping small objects in fabric or plastic sheeting, for which he is famous. The idea was derived from the ideas of Dadaism, but Christo gave it a completely new dimension. In 1961, he conceived a project for wrapping a public building, the first of a series of works that are amazing for their size, and the tenacity with which Christo implements them. His “wrappings” gradually assumed the character of huge, precisely planned happenings or events. As well as objects and buildings, Christo has also wrapped landscapes. His principal environmental works are: Wrapped Coast – One Million Square Feet (Little Bay, Australia, 1969); the orange Valley Curtain (Rifle, Colorado, 1972); Running Fence (California, 1976); Surrounded Islands (Miami, 1983) and Umbrellas (blue in Japan and yellow in the US, 1991).
The preparation – the studies of the site, the preliminary drawings, and the finding of sponsors – is an inherent part of the work. The wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin, for example, from conception to realization, took from 1971 to 1995. Photos, large-scale drawings, collages and map sections are executed by Christo in preparation, and these often become finished works of their own.
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