Christo has left us, a great artist is gone – his art will always be magic

The world-famous artist Christo has passed away at the age of 84. I think he was a remarkable and outstanding artist of our time.

Christo, who together with his wife Jeanne-Claude, among other things, clad the Parliament House in Berlin and the bridge Pont Neuf in Paris in textiles, died in his home for natural reasons.

Artist Christo was best known for giant ephemeral art projects, which included installing a bright pink 20-metre high pyramid on the Serpentine and wrapping the Reichstag building in silvery fabric.

The artist was born Christo Vladimirov Javacheff in Bulgaria in 13 June 1935, the same day as his late wife Jeanne-Claude. The pair collaborated for over five decades on monumental installations that blurred the boundary between architecture and art and surprised and delighted the public with their monumental scale.

“Christo lived his life to the utmost. He not only dreamed up what seemed impossible but also managed to make it a reality. Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s artwork united people around the world, and their work lives on in our hearts and memories,” writes Christos employees in a post on the artist couple’s official facebook page.

Before his death, Christo was in the process of completing two projects: a wrapping of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and “The Mastaba”, a huge construction in the United Arab Emirates that would become the world’s largest permanent sculpture, constructed of 410,000 barrels of oil.

The wrapped Triumphal Arch is scheduled to be unveiled in September next year. This summer, Center Georges Pompidou in Paris inaugurates a large retrospective of Christos and Jeanne-Claude’s time in the French capital.

His art projects were priceless and also very expensive to do. Christo always said: ”I use my own money, my own workforce and my own plans because I enjoy being completely free”.

I loved his art. He was a true pioneer.