LA RIOJA, SPAIN.- Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Works in the Wurth Collection, curated by Josy Kraft, presents in chronological order, through 92 pieces, some of the most significant works in the artistic career of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The itinerary begins with wrapped objects produced by Christo in the fifties and sixties, continuing with some of the major interventions by Christo and Jean-Claude in public settings, such as Surrounded Islands, Miami, Florida, 1980-1983; The Gates, Central Park, New York, 1979-2005; or the work in progress, Over the River, Project for the River Arkansas, Colorado.

The production of each work by Christo and Jeanne-Claude involves a complex, multi-discipline approach in which Christo uses various techniques which are, at the same time, a graphic documenting of the projects. Preparatory studies, drawings, collages, and scale models (through the sale of which the artists fund their projects) are performed with an artistic approach which combines elements of painting, sculpture, architecture and urban design. Each fold in the fabric and each knot of the cords that fasten Christo’s wrapping bring the piece a volumetric dimension. Alongside these creations by Christo, the exhibition displays photographs documenting finished projects by Christo and Jeanne-Claude taken by their collaborating photographers, Harry Shunk and Wolfgang Volz.

One of the main projects on view is Wrapped Floors and Stairways and Covered Windows, Museum Wurth, Kunzelsau, 1995, carried out on the headquarters and Wurth Museum in Germany. For three months, visitors to the museum, customers and employees of the Wurth Company could enjoy the artists’ largest indoor work of art. This collaboration strengthened the close relationship that already existed between Christo, Jeanne-Claude and Reinhold Wurth and the Wurth Collection, which with over 100 pieces of the artists’ work in its possession, is the second largest collection of Christo and Jeanne-Claude in Europe. That same year, the artists completed one of their most representative works, Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin 1971-1995, whose preparatory model can be seen for the first time in Spain in this exhibition.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude were, both, born on June 13, 1935 and since 1961 have developed an artistic collaboration whose identity in fine arts was based, at the beginning, on wrapping objects and, these days, on large-scale outdoor works of art in both rural and urban public spaces. Today, they are an undeniable point of reference in the international artistic evolution of the 20th and 21st centuries, with works on display in the world’s most prestigious galleries, such as the Metropolitan and the MoMA in New York and the Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Nationalgalerie in Berlin or the Tate Gallery in London.