Christo (1935-2020), a Bulgarian-born American artist, created huge, temporary art projects. He carried out many projects in collaboration with his wife, Jeanne-Claude, until her death in 2009. He aimed to reach many people, including those not usually interested in art, and so he located his works outdoors in or near urban centers rather than in art galleries. Christo’s projects cost millions of dollars. For example, Christo’s The Gates (2005) consisted of about 7,500 steel-supported gates decorated with fabric panels that ran about 23 miles (37 kilometers) through Central Park in New York City. The project cost $20 million.
Some of Christo’s projects involved wrapping buildings or other structures in canvas or plastic. Structures he wrapped include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 1968; the Pont Neuf, Paris’s oldest bridge, in 1985; and the Reichstag building in Berlin in 1995. Other projects celebrated natural landscape. They often are called wrapped art or environmental art. For example, in Surrounded Islands (1983), he encircled 11 islands off the Florida coast with more than 6 million square feet (560,000 square meters) of floating flamingo-pink polypropylene. Big Air Package (2013) was a temporary giant fabric sculpture installed inside the Gasometer in Oberhausen, Germany. The Gasometer is a storage tank built in 1928 and 1929 to store blast furnace gas. It is now a national industrial monument in Germany. Christo’s sculpture was made of polyester fabric and rope. When inflated, the sculpture stood 90 meters (295 feet) high.
Christo, whose full name is Christo Javacheff, was born in Gabrovo, Bulgaria, on June 13, 1935. From 1964, he lived in New York City. Christo died on May 31, 2020.
