Lotto 3470 - A213 Postwar e contemporary art - giovedì, 26. giugno 2025, 15h00
CHRISTO (VLADIMIROV JAVACHEFF)
(Gabrowo 1935–2020 New York)
The Pont Neuf, Wrapped (Project for Paris). 1985.
Coloured pencil, pencil, felt tip pen, wax crayon and collage with fabric, thread, cord, woven polyester fabric and construction drawing on cardboard (2 parts).
Signed, dated, titled and inscribed in coloured pencil on part A lower right: Christo 1985 The Pont Neuf, Wrapped (Project for Paris) Quai du Louvre, [...], as well as numbered on the reverse: 142 A 142 B, and with hanging instructions.
28 × 71 cm and 56 × 71 cm.
In the original acrylic glass frames.
In the original acrylic glass frames.
Provenance:
- Galerie Ehrensperger, Zurich.
- Private collection, Switzerland, acquired at the above gallery.
With Wrapped Pont Neuf (1985), the artist duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude staged a striking intervention in one of Paris’s most symbolically charged and routinely traversed urban sites. By entirely veiling the city’s oldest bridge in sand-colored fabric, they temporarily suspended its functional familiarity for fourteen days—allowing the structure to be re-experienced through an aesthetic strategy of apparent dematerialization and temporal transformation.
Working in the lineage of Conceptual Art and Land Art, Christo and Jeanne-Claude placed the idea at the center of their practice. Their large-scale projects open up unexpected voids in public space, drawing attention both to the physical presence of these sites and to their role in shaping collective identity. The fabric functions as a membrane-like skin, generating spaces of dialogue—between object and perception, history and the present as well as between function and form. In this sense, the transformation of landmarks such as the Pont Neuf is not an act of negation, but of reinterpretation: visibility through concealment.
The duo’s works extend beyond the traditional notion of sculpture and installation, incorporating not only volume and materiality but also time, history, public engagement and process. The preparatory collage presented here is therefore more than a historical record—it is part of an expanded understanding of the artwork itself, in which conception, execution, reception, the collective memory and many more aspects are inseparably intertwined and create an experience that goes beyond pure aesthetic pleasure.
Working in the lineage of Conceptual Art and Land Art, Christo and Jeanne-Claude placed the idea at the center of their practice. Their large-scale projects open up unexpected voids in public space, drawing attention both to the physical presence of these sites and to their role in shaping collective identity. The fabric functions as a membrane-like skin, generating spaces of dialogue—between object and perception, history and the present as well as between function and form. In this sense, the transformation of landmarks such as the Pont Neuf is not an act of negation, but of reinterpretation: visibility through concealment.
The duo’s works extend beyond the traditional notion of sculpture and installation, incorporating not only volume and materiality but also time, history, public engagement and process. The preparatory collage presented here is therefore more than a historical record—it is part of an expanded understanding of the artwork itself, in which conception, execution, reception, the collective memory and many more aspects are inseparably intertwined and create an experience that goes beyond pure aesthetic pleasure.
CHF 80 000 / 120 000 | (€ 82 470 / 123 710)
Venduto per CHF 125 000 (incl. premio)