Christo (Bulgarian/American, 1935-2020)
Abu Dhabi Mastaba
signed and dated ‘Christo 1978’ (lower right); further signed and dated ‘©Christo 1978’ (verso)
crayon and pencil
71.2 x 56.2 cm. (28 x 22 1/8 in.)

Provenance
With Fabien Fryns Gallery, 1998, where acquired by
Private Collection, U.K., from whom acquired by
Borro Luxury Asset Limited, circa 2018, from whom acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation for their assistance cataloguing this lot.

Christo (Vladimirov Javacheff) was born in 1935 in the city of Gabrovo, Bulgaria, where he remained until 1956. He was surrounded by creativity and had an interest in art from an early age. It is known that he was encouraged to attend drawing lessons from as young as six years old, at which time, his father ran a textile dyeing business, and his mother worked as a secretary to the director of the Sofia National Academy of Art, where Christo went on the study under the doctrine of Socialist Realism, between 1953-56.

In 1958, he moved to Paris where he first met his life-partner Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon. Jeanne-Claude collaboratively became a fundamental figure in the creation of many large-scale monumental environmental works of art with Christo, these widely known as the ‘Wrapped’ projects. Curator Anne Swartz described ‘momentary and alarming uncertainty established in the viewer’ in these works as what makes them so prominent. Christo and Jeanne-Claude deliberately poster the interpenetration of art with reality by taking widely recognised imagery and transforming it completely.

By the late 1960s the pair were creating large projects regularly. Their creations transcended the traditional constraints of painting, sculpture and architecture, and were well-received globally, with works installed in prominent historical spaces across the world. Notable realised projects included the Wrapped Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1968–69, Wrapped Monuments, Milan, Italy: Wrapped Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II on Piazza del Duomo, 1970, Valley Curtain, Rifle, Colorado, 1970-72, Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida, 1980-83, and The Pont Neuf Wrapped, Paris, 1975-85. As suggested by scholar Maria L. Santangelo, ‘their gentle intrusions into the landscape helped establish environmental art as a movement, as many artists, uninterested in the overemphasis on the commodity and objectness of art, were seeking an environmental approach to art making’ (Santangelo, p. 318).

L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, Paris, (1961-2021), is perhaps the pair’s most recognisable work; continued after Christo’s death in 2020, the monument was covered with 270,000 square feet of recyclable polypropylene fabric in silvery blue and 1.9 miles of red rope. Following the completion of L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s team focuses on the artists’ only permanent, large-scale public artwork: The Mastaba, started in 1977. The work will be the largest contemporary sculpture in the world, reaching an astonishing 150 meters high, 300 meters long at the vertical walls, and 225 meters wide at the 60-degree slanted walls. The sculpture will be made from 410,000 coloured barrels to form a mosaic, echoing Islamic architecture. The proposed location is in the desert of Liwa, approximately 160 kilometres south of the city of Abu Dhabi.

The present work which will be offered at auction on the 12^th of November, is composed of pencil, charcoal, crayon, and pastel, and is a preparatory design drawing prior to the execution of the Abu Dhabi Mastaba. Similar compositions exist, with some examples held by the artist’s Foundation, and within the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection at National Gallery of Art in Washinton D.C. The design, including the colours and positioning of the work was decided by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in 1979 when the pair first visited the United Arab Emirates. The designs were put in motion in the early 2000s, when the artists contacted professors of engineering from multiple renowned institutions regarding the feasibility of the project. This is an incredibly special work as it’s subject will be the artist’s only permanent, large-scale public artwork, and their final piece after a long and revolutionary career. The Mastaba will be executed by Christo’s nephew, Vladimir Yavachev.

References

• https://christojeanneclaude.net/artworks/the-mastaba/
• https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.6937.html
• Baal-Teshuva, Jacob. Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Taschen, 2001. pp. 1-28
• Swartz, Anne. "Christo and Jeanne-Claude." The Encyclopaedia of Sculpture(2004): pp. 317-320.
• McElroy, Gil. "Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Works from the Weston Collection." Espace Sculpture73 (2005): 32-33.