CHRISTO & JEANNE-CLAUDE (Bulgaria, 1935 - Nueva... Lot n° 414

Sleeping Faun Lithograph with manual intervention 81,3 x 58,4 cm The wrapped objects of Bulgarian-born American artist Christo Javachef are some of the most extreme examples of modern conceptual art. He was born in Gabrovo, Bulgaria, in 1935. He studied sculpture and scenography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia from 1952 to 1956, and spent a semester at the Vienna 'Kunstakademie', where he came into contact with the Russian constructivist movement. In 1957 he moved to Paris and it was in 1961 that he began large-scale projects, on the occasion of his first solo exhibition in Cologne. At the end of the 1960s he included monuments and buildings such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Pont Neuf in Paris. Later, environmental elements such as the Surrounded Islands, Valley Curtain, Biscayne Bay, Florida (Surrounded Islands, 1982) or a stretch of the Australian coast. Since the 1990s, Christo worked together with his wife, using the name "Christo and Jeanne-Claude". In 1995, his art gained worldwide attention when his "Wrapped Reichstag" was featured prominently in the media. For two weeks, millions of people came to Berlin to see it. This piece was the symbol of the reunification of Germany, although Jeanne-Claude and Christo had proposed the idea in 1971, the project only became possible when the Berlin Wall fell two decades later. For Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the period of preparation of the projects is part of their work, considering the aesthetic aspects more important than the technical possibilities. The present work, produced in 2000, is part of the "Wrapped Statues" project for the Munich Glyptothek. Lithography, silkscreen, wax, poletilene and rope on cardboard. Signed and numbered (68/100) in the lower right corner. Catalogue raisonné: Schellmann, 183, p. 241