Evgenia Atanasova’s Film about Christo and Jeanne-Claude Nominated at International Festival in the US

The film “The Gates in New York – The Long Life of Temporary Art” by Evgenia Atanasova has been nominated at the NanoCon International Film Festival in the United States.

The film, shot by cinematographer Kalin Ivanov and directed by Miglena Atanasova, tells the story of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates project on the occasion of its 20th anniversary.

Later this week, the Paris City Hall will officially name a square in the French capital after the artists to mark the 40th anniversary of their work The Wrapped Pont Neuf.

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Christo Vladimirov Javacheff - Christo - was born on June 13, 1935 in the town of Gabrovo, Bulgaria. His father, a chemist, ran a textile dyeing business. Encouraged by his mother, a former assistant to the director of the Sofia National Academy of Art, Christo began to take drawing and painting lessons at the age of six. He studied at the National Academy of Art in Sofia between 1953 and 1956.

After leaving Bulgaria, he settled in Paris in 1958, where he met Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon with whom he lived in the United States for 56 years, since 1964. The two created large-scale temporary works in the open air and became an emblem of shared creativity and their own, unique model of independence from the rules of the art world. They believe that the sole purpose of their works is to bring "joy and beauty."

Together with Jeanne-Claude, they wrapped iconic landmarks in fabric, such as the Pont Neuf in Paris in 1985 and the Reichstag in Berlin in 1995. In 2018, Christo unveiled "The London Mastaba," a floating installation on the Serpentine Lake in London. It was made of more than 7,000 oil barrels.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude are celebrated for their ambitious, site-specific art that transformed familiar spaces. Some of their most famous works include: Wrapped Coast in Australia (1968–69); Valley Curtain in Colorado (1970–72); Running Fence in California (1972–76); Surrounded Islands in Miami (1980–83; The Gates in New York's Central Park (1979–2005); Wrapped Reichstag in Berlin (1971–95); The Umbrellas in Japan and California (1984–91); The Floating Piers in Italy (2014–16); The London Mastaba on London’s Serpentine Lake (2016–18).

Christo died on May 31, 2020, at his home in New York City.

L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, a work planned by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, went ahead posthumously in Paris in September 2021.