Christo
The Umbrellas (Yellow)
19.2 x 20 inches
EDITION: Open Edition
FRAME SPECIFICATION: Acrylic box
The image size is 14.9 x 16.9 in.
The Umbrellas, a joint project between Japan and the United States (American side - Yellow)
This print is autographed and signed by Christo.
This print is an offset lithograph reproduction of drawings Christo made in the preparatory stages of “Umbrella, Japan=United States, 1984-1991,” which was realized in 1991.
The project involved erecting a total of 3,100 giant umbrellas (8.66 meters in diameter and 6 meters high) in Ibaraki and California at the same time.
Blue umbrellas were used on the Japan side, which has abundant water, and yellow umbrellas were used on the California side, where even the grass dries up half the year.
The prints were printed on thick watercolor/printmaking paper and are signed in pencil by Christo.
It was issued in an open edition in Germany, and autographed prints are rare.
Profile
Born in 1935 in Gabrovo, Bulgaria
No one would argue that the Bulgarian-born American artist Christo is one of the most prolific creative artists of the late 20th century and beyond.
Christo and his public and private partner, Jeanne-Claude (1935-2009), have created works that have covered 100,000 square meters of Australian coastline with fabric, erected a total of 3,100 giant umbrellas (6 meters high and 8.66 meters in diameter) in Ibaraki and California, and constructed a total of 3,100 umbrellas in Paris, France. The Pont Neuf Bridge over the Seine in Paris and the German Reichstag in Berlin were covered with cloth and rope, and 7,503 gates with saffron-colored cloth hanging down were installed in New York's Central Park.
Born in Bulgaria in 1935, Kurisuto fled communist Bulgaria while attending art school in Sofia, and lived in Prague, Vienna, and Geneva before defecting to Paris in 1958.
Starting with cans wrapped in canvas, which he created while in Geneva, he began to work with magazines, furniture, automobiles, and other items wrapped in mysterious packaging, and in parallel, he began to create works composed of piles of used oil drums.
In the early 1960s, he began working outdoors with Jeanne-Claude, whom he met shortly after leaving for Paris.
After “Wharf Package” and “Piled Drums” at the Cologne docks in the summer of 1961 and “Wall of Drums, Iron Curtain” created guerrilla-style in Paris the following year, they have realized projects in the U.S., European countries, and Japan.
The most distinctive feature of their projects is that they are all realized in public spaces for a short period of time, approximately two weeks.
For a work that exists for only a few weeks, they have spent more than 25 years in some cases to obtain permission from public agencies and landowners.
It is also their policy to raise the production costs, which can run into the billions of yen, entirely with their own hands, without relying on donations or subsidies.
The funds come from Christo's drawings, objects, and prints.
After Jeanne-Claude's sudden death in the fall of 2009, Christo continued to work on two projects: “Over the River,” a project on the Arkansas River in Colorado, in which he will stretch 9.5 kilometers of fabric horizontally across a 68-kilometer section of the river flowing through the Rocky Mountains, and “The Masters,” a project in which he will pile 410,000 oil drums in the desert to create a giant structure. Mastaba, a project in the United Arab Emirates, in which 410,000 drums will be piled up to form a giant structure in the desert.