Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

With around 80 works, the exhibition traces the artistic development of Christo and Jeanne-Claude from the mid-1950s until Christo's death in May 2020 and presents the artistic couple's most important projects - from the Iron Curtain in Paris in 1962 to the as-yet unrealized Mastaba in Abu Dhabi.

The show begins with Christo's early work and his first artistic works in Paris. It was here that Christo Vladimirov Javacheff, educated at the Sofia Academy of Art and a refugee from Bulgaria, came into contact with the works of various international artists. In Paris, he met Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon in 1958 when he was asked to paint a portrait of her mother.

Two of the projects shown in the exhibition are absolute highlights in the work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude: the wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin and the wrapping of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. As early as 1961, the artist couple had been working on the idea of wrapping a public building. Since the 1970s, Christo created drawings with which he visualized the wrapping of the Reichstag. After extensive, and above all, politically charged debates and a long approval process, the wrapping of the “political” building could be realized in 1995.

Of equally central importance as the Reichstag project was the realization of the Arc de Triomphe wrapping in 2021, one year after Christo's death. In studies, the exhibition also presents the as-yet unrealized Mastaba project for Abu Dhabi, which, if realized, would exceed the dimensions of the Pyramid of Giza and be experienced indefinitely as a monument to creativity. In addition to Christo's works, the exhibition features the following artists: Arman, César, Lucio Fontana, Raymond Hains, Yves Klein, Jacques Mahé de la Villeglé, Piero Manzoni, Daniel Spoerri, Antoni Tàpies and Wolf Vostell. The photographer Wolfgang Volz, who has been documenting Christo and Jeanne-Claude's international projects since 1972 in close collaboration with the artistic couple and with exclusive rights, is also represented.

The exhibition is made possible thanks to the generous support of Ingrid and Thomas Jochheim. The collectors, who live in Recklinghausen and Berlin and are friends of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, own one of the world's most extensive collections of the artist duo.

"Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Paris. New York. Crossing Borders" is an exhibition of the Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf. The main sponsor of the project on the Museum Island in Schleswig is the Freundeskreis Schloss Gottorf e.V.