Christo and his large-scale artworks

The "Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped" was announced as the last large-scale project completed by Christo during his lifetime. The Parisian landmark at the end of the Champs Elysees was to be covered in September 2020 with a silvery-blue recyclable fabric, tied by a red rope. Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude had developed the concept for this installation back in 1962.

Christo Vladimirov Javacheff was born in Bulgaria on June 13, 1935. After studying art in Sofia, he fled to the West. In Paris he met his future wife, Jeanne-Claude, with whom he initiated spectacular art projects in the late 1960s. Christo took care of the art, Jeanne-Claude the organization.

Christo developed his first elaborate installations in the 1960s, wrapping everyday objects such as chairs, magazines and oil drums. Later he created "Air Packages" such as this 5,600-cubic-meter installation at the Documenta 4 art fair in Kassel in 1968, which earned him worldwide recognition.

In the 1970s, projects by Christo and Jeanne-Claude grew more elaborate and colorful. To preserve their artistic freedom, the couple financed the installations by selling drawings, photographs and models of their works. In this spectacular creation from 1972, a 400 meter (1,310 ft.)-long cloth was stretched across Rifle Gap, a valley in Colorado.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude never concealed objects and buildings to the point that they could no longer be recognized. The packaging was meant to stimulate the viewer's imagination. In 1985, they wrapped the Pont Neuf in Paris. Depending on the weather, the fabric would glitter differently — allowing the bridge to literally appear in a different light.

In the 1990s, the art interventions of Christo and Jeanne-Claude became increasingly gigantic and risky. A worker died during the installation of one of the 3,000 umbrellas set up in both Japan and California for the project "The Umbrellas." Afterwards, Christo hired only professional climbers and engineers. He also commissioned German companies to manufacture the huge fabrics for his art.

The journey from the initial idea to the completion of an artwork can be lengthy. It took Christo and Jeanne-Claude 23 years to bring about their project "Wrapped Reichstag." The spectacular show finally took place in June 1995 when they wrapped the seat of the German parliament with 100,000 square meters (1,076,000 square feet) of silver fabric. Within 16 days, 5 million visitors came to see it.

Christo started working with oil drums back in the 1960s. In 1962 he blocked a Parisian street with stacked barrels. The barricade, titled "Iron Curtain," was created in protest of the construction of the Berlin Wall. He referred to the division again in his 1999 installation "The Wall," a 26-meter-high wall made of 13,000 oil barrels set up in the Gasometer, an industrial space in Oberhausen.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude not only covered objects and structures but also designed landscapes and parks, such as here in 2005 with "The Gates" in New York's Central Park. Christo and Jeanne-Claude planned the gates with the blowing fabrics in 1980, but the approval of the project took even longer than the "Wrapped Reichstag." Environmental concerns were the main issue.

Christo's wife Jeanne-Claude died in 2009, and it took a few years for the artist to return to his projects. "Big Air Package" from 2013 was the first project he designed alone. The 90-meter-high, air-filled textile package was set up in the Oberhausen Gasometer. Visitors could walk inside the huge sculpture — a fascinating spatial experience.

With "Floating Piers," Christo fulfilled a longtime dream: to walk on water. Over 1.2 million visitors came to walk the three-kilometer stretch of pontoons on Lake Iseo in Italy. Like all of his projects, Christo financed the roughly €13 million ($14 million) work by selling sketches and photos, allowing him to remain free and independent of sponsors.

Like the air packages, variations on the idea of the mastaba regularly appeared in Christo's works. The pyramid, modeled after an Ancient Egyptian tomb, was a temporary installation in London's Hyde Park in 2018. The 7,506 oil barrels stacked on a floating platform were Christo's first major outdoor project in the UK.

The Mastaba in London was a foretaste of the great mastaba that Christo and Jeanne-Claude had planned for Abu Dhabi. The gigantic pyramid of 410,000 oil barrels was to be the artist couple's first major permanent project. They often visited their desired location in the desert of the United Arab Emirates. "The Mastaba," featured on Christo's homepage, remained a dream.