Christo & Jeanne-Claude

Life and work

Christo Vladimirov Javacheff was born in Bulgaria in 1935. Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon was born the same year in Morocco. The two met in Paris in the late 1950s and began working together soon after, later settling in New York and becoming American citizens. Working under the joint name Christo and Jeanne-Claude, they became known for large scale, temporary environmental installations that wrapped or reshaped public monuments, buildings and open landscapes rather than adding permanent objects to them. Among their best known projects are the Wrapped Reichstag in Berlin in 1995 and The Gates in New York's Central Park in 2005, both realized after decades of negotiation with public authorities. Jeanne-Claude died in 2009. Christo carried their unfinished projects forward until his own death in 2020, and the wrapping of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris was completed by his team after his death, following plans the couple had drawn up together. Their practice sits at the boundary of land art and environmental art and was funded entirely through the sale of preparatory drawings, collages, scale models and editions, never through sponsorship, grants or entrance fees.

Disciplines and how they differ in the saleroom

The couple worked across several distinct categories that the market treats very differently. Unique preparatory drawings and collages, made in the studio while a project was being planned, are singular works on paper that can carry substantial value when tied to a well known installation. Scale models built from wood, fabric and other materials document a project in three dimensions and are rarer still. Editioned lithographs, screenprints and offset prints, produced in numbered runs and often signed, are far more widely available and trade at correspondingly lower levels. LLB Auction's own sales of this artist have so far concerned a small number of lots at a modest price level, consistent with the wider market for editioned and multiple works rather than unique studio pieces.

What a specialist examines

A specialist begins with the signature, its placement on the sheet, and whether a work is credited to Christo alone or to Christo and Jeanne-Claude jointly, since the couple only began attributing earlier projects to both names from 1994 onward. Dating follows from the project a work relates to and from any inscription the artist added. Provenance matters more than for many artists because so much material passed directly from the couple's own studio into private hands over six decades, so a clear chain back to that studio, a dealer, or a documented sale strengthens a work considerably. Exhibition history, especially inclusion in a museum retrospective, is checked against the venues and dates listed under Career. Condition points specific to the medium include foxing, fading or handling creases on works on paper, and any loss to the fabric, twine or other collage elements the artists often incorporated. Edition number and total run size are checked against the reference volume on their prints and objects listed under Career, and any question about a specific work is best directed to the body listed there.

Market position

At auction, prices vary widely with medium and subject. Sotheby's Paris sold a large preparatory drawing for The Umbrellas, a joint project for Japan and the United States, for 2,100,000 dollars in 2021, as part of a dedicated sale of works from the couple's own collection. Bonhams sold a related drawing for the same project in 2020. At Phillips, a unique drawing for the unrealized Orange Store Front project made 175,000 dollars in 2019, while a small collage titled Store Front, Mandarin Yellow made 27,500 pounds the same year, and a set of four lithographs from an unrealized projects portfolio made 5,670 dollars in 2020. The gap between these figures illustrates how far unique studio works and editioned prints diverge in the same market. Beyond LLB Auction's own results, this is a documented public market carried mainly by Christie's, Sotheby's, Phillips, Bonhams and Artcurial.

Preparing a valuation request

A seller should gather the original invoice or any provenance paperwork showing how the work entered their collection, clear photographs of the front, the signature and the verso, and accurate measurements including any frame. The medium should be recorded precisely, distinguishing a unique drawing or collage from a numbered edition. Any correspondence with the artists' studio or with the Foundation listed under Career, along with an archive or edition number, should be kept with the work. A recent condition report is useful for works on paper or with collage elements, given how sensitive these materials are to light and handling. Finally, any record of the work's exhibition or publication history helps place it correctly within the couple's decades long body of work.