Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Revealing an Object by concealing it

Rudy Chiappini (ed.)

Christo and Jeanne-Claude met in October 1958, when he was commissioned to paint a portrait of her mother, Précilda de Guillebon.
In 1961, Christo covered barrels at the port of Cologne, the first large objects he had wrapped. In 1962, the couple tackled their first monumental project, Rideau de Fer (Iron Curtain). Without warning or consent of authorities and as a statement against the Berlin Wall, they blocked off Rue Visconti, a small street on the River Seine, with oil barrels. Jeanne-Claude stalled approaching police, convincing them to allow the piece to stand for a few hours. Although he was simultaneously holding his first exhibition at a gallery, it was the Visconti project that made Christo known in Paris.
In 1968, Christo and Jeanne-Claude had the chance to participate at the Documenta 4 in Kassel. The couple wanted to build an air package with a volume of 5,600 m³, which would be lifted by cranes and visible from a distance of 25 km.
At the end of 1969 Jeanne-Claude and Christo wrapped the coast of Little Bay in Sydney, Australia with the aid of 130 helpers who devoted 17,000 work hours. The project required 9,300 m² of synthetic fabric and 56 km of rope. After initial resistance from the authorities and the public, reactions were largely positive.
At the end of 1970 Christo and Jeanne-Claude began the preparations for the Valley Curtain project. A 400-meter long cloth was to be stretched across Rifle Gap, a valley in the Rocky Mountains near Rifle, Colorado. The project was complicated due to protests by environmentalists, and with raising the planned budget of $230,000. The project required 14,000 square meters of cloth to be hung on steel cable, fastened with iron bars fixed in concrete on each slope, and 200 tons of concrete had to be carried by hand in buckets up each slope.