Artist Jean-Claude dies at 74
She met her partner Christo in Paris in 1958. They have been collaborating for 51 years.
The family statement said Christo was deeply saddened by his wife’s death but was “committed to honor the promise they made to each other many years ago: that the art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude would continue.” That includes completing their current installation, “Over The River”, a series of fabric panels to be suspended over the Arkansas River in Colorado, and “The Mastaba,” a stack of 410,000 oil barrels configured as a mastaba, or rectangle with outward-sloping sides, envisioned for the United Arab Emirates.
Like all their projects, these are intended to be temporary, a quality at the heart of the artistic enterprise. Whether executed in oil drum or brightly colored fabric, the art of her and her husband, Jeanne-Claude said, expressed “ the quality of love and tenderness that we human beings have for what does not last.”
