Born in 1935 in Bulgaria and Morocco, respectively, Christo and Jeanne-Claude went on to become two of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century. Since the 1960s they have been known for their monumental, site-specific installations around the world. They championed an ambitious and boundary-breaking practice that prioritized locality, collaboration, and human engagement. Some of their most iconic projects involved completely wrapping historic buildings in fabric, such as the Arc de Triomphe and Berlin’s Reichstag, as well as The Gates in New York’s Central Park (2005) and the Floating Piers in Italy’s Lake Iseo (2014–16).

In addition to the spellbinding effect of their public installations, their conceptual and production processes usually involved years of collaboration and negotiation with local community leaders, environmental advocates, architects, among many other people, driving experimental artistic production into the center of civic and public life. Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work is held by many major public collections worldwide, with a retrospective planned at London’s Saatchi Gallery in November 2024.