New York
Dynamic duo separated. Jean-Claude dies at the age of 74.
She spent her whole life together with her husband, colleague and alter ego, Christo, creating and making artistic experiments in a language that refers to Land Art and Conceptual Art, bringing the Avanguardia of the 20th century to the forefront of the third millennium.
It is not possible to speak about Jeanne-Claude without mentioning her other half, Christo, or viceversa.
The “artistic couple,” who also shared their birthday on June 13, 1935, met in Paris in 1958 when Christo was commissioned to make a portrait of Jeanne-Claude’s mother. Jeanne-Claude was born in Casablanca, Morocco where her French military father was stationed, and Christo was a Bulgarian refugee.
By the year 1962 they already had a two year old son and had realized their first monumental project Rideau de Fer (Iron Curtain), which was a statement against the Berlin Wall: they blocked off Rue Visconti, a small street near the River Seine, with oil barrels.
From this first joint work until today, they have been designing environmental projects that consist predominantly in the complete wrapping of entire buildings or even landscapes, an approach that became their trademark as well as their interrogation of the artistic practice in it of itself. They rejected the reproduction or imitation of nature, choosing instead to modify it and its perception, thereby provoking reflection of their intervention.
Some of their most exemplary works are Surroundedan, an installation projected by Jeanne-Claude with the idea of surrounding eleven islands in Miami's Biscayne Bay with 603,850 m2 of pink polypropylene floating fabric. It was completed on May 4,1983 with the aid of 430 workers, and the project could be admired for two weeks. In 1991 they realized The Umbrellas, consisting of more than 3,000 umbrellas split between Japan and California, respectively blue in Japan and yellow in California, and the contemporaneous installation was meant to join together these two geographical areas.
In 1995 they were granted the permission to wrap the Reichstag in Berlin, creating a lasting symbol of Germany's conflicted history.
One of their last giant projects was The Gate, started in 1979 and realized in 2005 in Central Park, New York.
Until 1994 they only went by the name of Christo but, since then, they started to sign their works as “the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude”. Some projects took many years to be implemented due to the necessity of obtaining fundraising, permits and permissions. Others were never realized.
Nevertheless, they never stopped conceptualizing new projects, one after the other, and their penchant for their creative practice never ceased. Jean-Claude once affirmed “each project is a child of ours”. That’s why Christo, although deeply sorrowful over his loss has stated that “the art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude would continue”, and he will honour the promise they made to each other many years ago.
Christo has two projects underway: “Over The River” for the Arkansas River in Colorado, and "The Mastaba" in the United Arab Emirates.
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