Christo

( 1935 - )

Christo was born Christo Javacheff in Gabrovo, Bulgaria, in 1935. He studied at the Fine Arts Academy in Sofia from 1953 to 1956, when he moved to Prague. In 1957 Christo escaped to Vienna where he lived briefly before moving to Paris. Christo began his wrapped objects in Paris in 1958. Christo and Jeanne-Claude erected the first of their large temporary monuments in Cologne in 1961. In 1964 the artists moved to New York, and in 1968 they wrapped their first building, the Kunsthalle in Bern. They wrapped a mile and a half of Australian coast in 1969, and followed that work in 1972 with Valley Curtain, composed of 250,000 square feet of orange nylon fabric stretching across a pass in Rifle, Colorado. Their other major projects were Running Fence (1972-76); The Pont Neuf Wrapped (1975-85); Wrapped Reichstag (1971-95); Surrounded Islands (1980-83); and The Umbrellas, Japan-USA (1985-91). Christo and Jeanne-Claude live in New York City.