Artwork Description
Christo and Jeanne-Claude – Five Urban Projects Portfolio
Dimensions: 40 x 30″ var. group / 14.25 x 11.25″ framed
Year: 1985
Medium: lithographs with collage and hand work
Edition: 57/100
This work resides in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (1935–2020) and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon (1935–2009), known as Christo and Jeanne-Claude, were artists noted for their large-scale, site-specific environmental installations, often large landmarks and landscape elements wrapped in fabric, including the Wrapped Reichstag, The Pont Neuf Wrapped, Running Fence in California, and The Gates in New York City’s Central Park.
This suite of Christo works is comprised of five three dimensional works on paper:
1 Wrapped Trees, Project for the Avenue
des Champs-Elysées, Paris
2 Mein Kölner Dom, Wrapped,
Project for Cologne
3 Lower Manhattan Wrapped Building,
Project for New York
4 Curtains for La Rotonda,
Project for Milan
5 Ponte S. Angelo, Wrapped, Project
for Rome
This complete set of five prints is comprised of photographs with collotype and screenprint, four with collage in various materials, some with felt marker or pencil additions, mounted to Arches paper.
Born on the same day in Bulgaria and Morocco, respectively, the pair met and married in Paris in the late 1950s. Originally working under Christo’s name, they later credited their installations to both “Christo and Jeanne-Claude”. Until his own death in 2020, Christo continued to plan and execute projects after Jeanne-Claude’s death in 2009.
Their work was typically large, visually impressive, and controversial, often taking years and sometimes decades of careful preparation – including technical solutions, political negotiation, permitting and environmental approval, hearings and public persuasion. The pair refused grants, scholarships, donations or public money, instead financing the work via the sale of their own artwork.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude described the myriad elements that brought the projects to fruition as integral to the artwork itself, and said their projects contained no deeper meaning than their immediate aesthetic impact; their purpose being simply for joy, beauty, and new ways of seeing the familiar.