An iconic couple in contemporary art: Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Christo Vladimiroff Javacheff was born in Bulgaria in 1935. He studied at the Fine Arts School in Sofia before fleeing the regime and moving to Paris in 1958, where he met Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, who would become his wife and the partner in all his huge artistic projects. The leitmotiv of their work? To pack monuments, places, parks in order to create an unusual and ephemeral work. We owe them, among others, the "Surrounded Islands", the encircling of the Biscayne Islands in Miami by pink fuchsia polypropylene (1983), the packaging of the Pont-Neuf in Paris in 1985 by ochre-yellow polyester and the packaging of the Reichstag in Berlin in 1995 by a silver fabric. "The Floating Piers", an installation of floating platforms linking islands on Lake Iseo in Italy, in 2016, will be realized without Jeanne-Claude, who died in 2009.
With Laure Martin, art historian and curator, long-time friend of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and Vladimir Yavachev, Christo's nephew, who accompanied his uncle in many of his projects. Both directed "L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped", the last work of the artist who died in May 2020.
Discussion moderated by Alain Berland, head of cultural programming at the Beaux-Arts de Paris.
As part of the festival "Un Week-end à l'Est".
