Christo American Bulgarian, 1935-2020

Christo Vladimirov Javacheff was born in 1935 in the small town of Gabrovo, Bulgaria. Christo's early works were inspired by the Nouveau Réalisme movement, which made use of everyday objects and materials adapted into multimedia installations. The artist's experimentation with bicycles, beer cans, and road signs drew from artists like Jean Tinguely and Yves Klein, whose work made use of sculptural and kinetic elements to blur the line between artwork and environment.

Later works like The Gates (2005), an installation of 7503 bright orange gateways spread across Central Park in New York, involved multiple stakeholders and generated great public engagement. 

In Paris, Christo painted portraits in the streets signed under the name 'Javacheff'. He met Jeanne-Claude through her mother, who commissioned a self-portrait. When the pair learned they were born the same time—to the hour—a partnership was quickly formed. The couple had a son in 1960 and moved to New York City four years later.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude became recognised in the 1960s, as they experimented with oil barrels made into large-scale installations. These resulted in works like Wall of Oil Barrels – The Iron Curtain (1962), in which oil barrels were stacked to block access through a street.