Christo's Disappearance

Javacheff Christo disappeared yesterday at his New York home of natural causes. Born in Bulgaria in 1935 to an entrepreneur father and a mother employed at the Sofia Academy of Fine Arts, after high school he moved to Prague to continue at the local academy of fine arts. But after a year he moved to Paris where he lives by contrivances making portraits for the Parisian ladies. He is commissioned to portray Mrs Denat de Guillebon, and meets his daughter Jeanne-Claude,who has already been married. The two fall in love and Jeanne-Claude leaves her husband to live together with Christo. From this moment the two form a couple also artistic inseparable as the projects will always be signed with the word"Christo and Jeanne-Claude". The preparatory cartoons, the works, the multiples will always be made and signed by Christo alone. Essentially, Jeanne-Claude will provide logistical and administrative support for projects as well as contributing to the choice of places and materials to be used. Christo initially joined the Nouveau Réalisme movement and then continued autonomously in the current Land Art.  His first works are those of packing the most disparate objects and the representation of shop windows. Later, the packaging projects will be more and more magnificent and often in iconic places, such as the Pont Neuf in Paris, the Reichstag in Berlin or the Pinciana Gate in Rome. One may wonder where this desire to pack comes from. As a child, Christo was fascinated by shop windows. Standing in front of the windows fantasized worlds, situations, people, made beyond the darkening sheets, so his first works were the showcases in preparation. But the imagination could also gallop in front of any stuff packed, it was enough to imagine the people who used it and the contexts of use. So from objects to landscapes the step was short and then away to the large packing of natural environments and historical monuments up to the last great and amazing "The floating piers", the floating walkway on Lake Iseo that connected the mainland from Sulzano to Montisola visited by as many as one and a half million people in the two weeks of opening to the public.

On our website at www.galleriaincontro.it/en/artisti-opere/javacheff-christo you can see Christo's last work that we have left: Curtain for The Roundabout of the Besana

Tags: Javacheff Christo - Christo - Christo and Jeanne Claude - Nouveau Réalisme - Land Art