Crazy about Christo. The full name of the artist who, with his work The Floating Piers is allowing tens of thousands of citizens and tourists to "walk" on the waters of Lake Iseo (they can do it from yesterday until July 3), Christo Vladimirov Yavachev. It is Bulgarian and the floating walkway on the Iseo, which cost 15 million euros and in which few believed, marks its return to our country more than 40 years after the last open-air work, built in 1974 in Rome with “Wrapped Roman Wall”. Then the artist packed a section of the Aurelian Walls.
Born in Bulgaria on June 13, 1935, to an entrepreneur and secretary of the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia (where he himself will study) Christo he lived in Paris, where he arrived in 1958. Considered stateless, he renounces his Slavic surname to use only his first name with which he became famous. In that period, immediately after escaping from the Soviet bloc following a brief stay in Prague (1956) and Vienna (1957), he began making portraits or abstract paintings and then "packaging" various types of objects: cans, bottles, chairs, even a car.
Later, with his wife Jeanne Claude Denat de Guillebon (Casablanca June 13, 1935 - New York, November 18, 2009), he began a common life and artistic journey. The first collaboration of Christo and Jeanne-Claude it is in the port of Cologne which is followed the following year in Paris by their first monumental work: Rideau de Fer, a wall of oil barrels blocking rue Visconti, near the Seine, in protest against the Berlin wall. In 1964 they emigrated to the United States. From early wrapped objects to monumental outdoor projects, including Valley Curtains in Colorado (1970-1972), Running Fence in California (1972-1976), Surrounded Islands in Miami (1980-1983), The Pont Neuf Wrapped in Paris (1975 -1985), The Umbrellas in Japan and California (1984-1991), Wrapped Reichstag in Berlin (1972-1995) and The Gates in Central Park, New York (1979-2005), artists pushed the traditional limits of painting , sculpture and architecture. Together they have changed the very concept of "public art" by creating temporary works with a deliberately ephemeral duration.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude started a long time ago conceive of projects for Italy, only some of which were then implemented. Their link with the Belpaese dates back to 1963, the year of their first solo show at the Apollinaire Gallery in Milan, followed by other exhibitions in Rome, Venice and Turin (in 1964). The first packaged monument was in Rome and it was a statue in Villa Borghese, albeit of modest size and without authorizations, but the police did not intervene, believing that the conservators were carrying out restoration work. “Wrapped Statue” remained that way for a total of six months. In 1968 it was the turn of Spoleto, where in July during the Festival dei Due Mondi, Christo and Jeanne-Claude chose to pack the medieval tower and the Baroque fountain on the Piazza del Mercato.
