Christo and Jeanne-Claude

CHRISTO (Bulgaria, 1935-USA, 2020); JEANNE CLAUDE (Morocco, 1935-USA, 2009).
"Ten million oil drums wall, project for the Suez Canal", 1972.
Color silkscreen on paper, edition of 70 copies.
Printed by Hans-Peter Haas, Stuttgart, published by Fischer Fine Art, London. L./S.
Unsigned.
Measurements: 70,50 x 55,50 cm.

Silkscreen that responds to one of the great projects of "wrapping" of public monuments of the couple Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Christo and Jeanne-Claude's "wrappings" have had a special impact on the history of contemporary art. This pair of conceptual artists conceived the idea of wrapping public monuments to generate the double game of giving visibility to something through the practice of hiding it: statues and emblematic buildings usually go unnoticed, so Christo, from the seventies on, planned to resignify them (leaving most of them only in projects, with plans, drawings, etc.) opting for a type of art that was at the same time grandiloquent and ephemeral.
A well-known artistic couple of the late 20th century, Christo and Jeanne-Claude's wrapped objects are some of the most extreme examples of conceptual art. Christo Valdimirov Javacheff studied between 1952 and 1956 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia, then spent a year in Prague. In 1957 Christo fled the socialist state and settled in Vienna, from where he would travel to Geneva and finally to Paris. His life in Paris was characterized by economic deprivation and social isolation, which was increased by his difficulty in learning the French language. He earned money painting portraits, which he likened to prostitution. In January 1958, Christo made his first piece of "wrapped art"; he covered an empty paint jar with a canvas soaked in acrylic. Christo and Jeanne-Claude met in Paris in November 1958. In 1961 he tackled what would be his first project with large objects, wrapping barrels in the port of Cologne. In 1962, Christo and Jeanne-Claude tackled their first monumental project, "Rideau de fer", as a statement against the Berlin Wall. The work consisted of blocking off Visconti Street over the river with oil barrels. Although Christo was simultaneously holding his first gallery exhibition, it was the Visconti project that made him known in Paris. In 1964 the couple settled in New York. In 1968 they participated in Documenta 4 in Kassel, and in 1969 they undertook one of their most famous projects, that of wrapping the Little Bay waterfront in Sydney, Australia. Since then, they have completed numerous large-scale projects around the world, including "Running fence" and "Wrapped walk ways" in the United States, "Pont Neuf" in Paris, "Umbrellas" in the United States and Japan, and the Reichstag building in Germany.