Moving Mountains

One of the most talked-about artists of his generation, Christo has much in common with his work: larger than life and infectiously captivating. He discusses freedom, living in the moment, and his ‘useless’ art with Marianna Cerini

- Marianna Cerini

Most artworks are pieces you can look at in the confines of a gallery, a museum, a public square. But for Christo, the projects he calls art take up entire islands. Or mountains. Or parks. “They are urban or rural spaces that we borrow to create a gentle disturbance. That’s it, really. That’s the essence of what we do. Transforming landscapes into something else, for a few days, so that what is in those landscapes is elevated to a work of art. Though, for us, nature itself—or any other space we use—is art all along.”

The artist speaks quickly with a thick Bulgarian accent. He’s lean, an almost wiry figure in baggy trousers and a white-collared pink shirt, with messy snow-white hair and a broad, bronzed face marked by deep wrinkles. He’s 81, but you wouldn’t know it: his demeanour is sharp and animated, his replies quick-fire successions of facts, statements, and witty comments. He’s so taken by his points that he constantly shuffles, unable to sit still. “I love to move, to walk, to engage with physical things. I always have, since I left Bulgaria. Movement has been a constant in my life, from one city to another, one project to the next.”

Born Christo Javacheff in 1935 in Gabrovo, Bulgaria, the artist fled communist Eastern Europe in the 1950s to Paris, where he met his wife and lifelong collaborator, Jeanne-Claude, who died in 2009. The couple soon left France to base themselves in New York, and have worked all around the world in the decades since, making some of the most daring and expensive outdoor art ever seen.