Drawings of Christo’s at Sotheby’s

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Christo in the studio

In June, Paris city officials confirmed that after a delay, Christo’s art project – which involves covering the historic Arc de Triomphe in blue fabric – will be completed this September. Now Sotheby’s has teamed up with the artist’s estate to organize a sale that will bring Christo’s preparatory sketches to the market.

Under the title “The Last Christo”, 25 sketches for the installation L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped are on sale for private sale. The Christo paintings will also be on display at the home’s headquarters in Paris from September 17 to October 3, which coincides with the unveiling of the wrapped monument.

The cost of Christo art for sale ranges from $ 150,000 to $ 2.5 million. The cost of Christo art for sale ranges from $ 150,000 to $ 2.5 million. The proceeds from the sale will finance a government project. As part of the Christo art project, the Champs Elysees will be covered with nearly 270,000 square feet of polypropylene fabric and nearly 10,000 feet of red rope.

Christo the artist conceived the piece in the early 60s, although packaging plans have only recently come to fruition. Simon Shaw, Sotheby’s vice chairman for global art, said this should finally happen, 60 years later.

Throughout his life, Christo regularly sold sketches to support his public projects, which are usually expensive to produce. The € 14 million ($ 16.9 million) needed to realize Christo art project L`Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped was raised through the sale of research and reproductions from his archives and that of his partner Jeanne-Claude.

The widely anticipated Paris project was originally scheduled to take place in April this year but has been delayed due to the pandemic. It is likely to become “the artistic event of the year, especially in a world where many of us have been denied access to art.” Shaw said.

Christo the artist and Jeanne-Claude are known for temporarily covering buildings, monuments, and various other public spaces with fabrics for works known as “wraps”. Among their most famous large-scale installations is Curtain in the Valley (1974), for which a couple hung a curtain several miles long across a mountain road in Colorado; it lasted a little over a day, but it is considered an important work.

The two artists also wrapped the Pont Neuf in Paris and the Reichstag in Berlin. The last Christo art project was completed before his death last year. It was a massive structure formed from oil drums on top of London’s Serpentine in Hyde Park in 2018. Jeanne-Claude died in 2009.

In February, Sotheby’s sold works from the duo’s personal collection, including works by:

  • Andy Warhol;
  •  Yves Klein;
  •  Claes Oldenberg;
  •  Lucio Fontana;
  •  Yves Klein;
  •  Mimmo Rotella;
  •  Marcel Duchamp.

Preparatory Christo art projects from the 1960s series “Packaging” and “Showcase” were also sold at auction. They raised $ 11.2 million, more than double their $ 4 million estimates. Sketches prepared by artists for large-scale projects in the field of public art have established themselves among collectors.

Research for one international public art project, The Umbrellas, Joint Project for Japan and USA (1991), sold for 1.7 million euros ($ 2.06 million) in February. This is more than eight times the pre-sale estimate and set a new auction record. Another study in the series also liked buyers, earning € 1.22 million ($ 1.5 million), five times its estimate of € 200,000.

Christo art projects

Among Christo art projects there are really fascinating ones.

The London Mastaba was a temporary sculpture in Hyde Park. It consisted of 7506 horizontally stacked barrels on a floating platform in Serpentine Lake.

The London Mastaba

From 18 June to 3 July 2016, Lake Iseo, Italy, was reimagined. The floating piers consisted of 100,000 square meters of shimmering yellow fabric carried by a modular docking system of 220,000 HDPE cubes floating on the surface of the water.

The Floating Piers

The Gates. Christo art project in New York City’s Central Park was completed in February 2005. The 7503 gates, with their loosely hanging saffron-colored fabric panels, looked like a river of gold.

The Gates

Christo the artist and Jeanne-Claude have worked with trees for many years. The project began in the 1960s when artists first proposed wrapping living trees. The Wrapped Trees in Rhein are the result of 32 years of effort.

The Wrapped Trees

Wrapped Reichstag. After struggles in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, the Christo art project was completed in June 1995. For two weeks, the building was enveloped in a silvery cloth, framed by blue ropes that accentuate the features and proportions of the imposing structure.

Wrapped Reichstag

The Umbrellas, a temporary piece of art realized in two countries simultaneously, reflected the similarities and differences in the way of life and land use in the two inland valleys in Japan and the United States.

The Umbrellas

In 1985 Christo the artist and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris. The vision of the project by the artists originated in 1975. This was the last time they had a packaging idea.

The Pont Neuf Wrapped

Surrounded Islands. In 1983, eleven islands located in Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami were surrounded by 6.5 million square feet (603,870 square meters) of floating pink woven polypropylene fabric covering the surface of the water and extending from each island into the bay.

Surrounded Islands

Ocean Front. For 18 days, 150,000 square feet (13,935 square meters) of white woven polypropylene floating fabric covered the water surface of a crescent-shaped bay at King’s Beach in Newport, Rhode Island.

Ocean Front

Christo art project Valley Curtain was installed between two Colorado mountain slopes in 1972. The orange curtain was made from 18,600 square meters of woven nylon fabric. 28 hours after the end of the storm, it was necessary to proceed with the removal.

Valley Curtain

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