Picture "Wrapped Volkswagen" (2013)
Picture "Wrapped Volkswagen" (2013)
Quick info
limited, total 250 copies | numbered | signed | mixed media print | framed | size 70 x 79 cm
Detailed description
Picture "Wrapped Volkswagen" (2013)
Christo has covered a variety of vehicles in his career, including a Vespa and a Harley Davidson. However, he was not as fascinated by any of them as by the classic industrial design VW Beetle, which has sold over 21 million copies worldwide.
In 1963, Christo covered a VW Beetle with yellow cloth and coarse rope. The automobile was freed from its artistic wrapping as soon as it was realised - completely in accordance with Christo, whose installations are intended as temporary interventions.
Fifty years later, Christo created "Wrapped Volkswagen", a limited edition that recalled the action and paid homage to the VW Beetle as a legendary car model. For this, he cut out a drawing of the car, then reworked the shape by hand with fabric and covered it with threads to create the three-dimensional impression of wrapping.
A true-to-scale technical drawing of the VW Beetle, presenting a top view, front and rear view as well as a side view, completed the work - a wonderful piece of contemporary history for automobile and design lovers.
3D collage, serigraphy, fabric, transparent polyethene and yarn, completed with felt and pencil, and photographs with tape, 2013. Edition: 160 copies numbered with Arabic numerals (offered here) + 90 copies numbered with Roman numerals, signed by hand. Motif size/sheet size 63.5 x 72.4 cm. Size in frame 70 x 79 cm as shown.
About Christo
1935-2020
Christo achieved world fame by extraordinarily wrapping large landmarks and landscape elements in fabric.
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff was born 13 June 1935 in Gabrovo, Bulgaria, to as a son of an industrialist family. He studied at the Sofia Academy of Fine Arts from 1953 until 1956 and visited Prague in 1956. The following year Christo attended the Vienna Fine Arts Academy. In 1958, he went to Paris where he first began to wrap things – this was the beginning of the "wrapped objects".
Starting in 1961, Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude (1935-2009) have caused a sensation all over the world with their spectacular wrapping projects. Especially the project "Wrapped Reichstag", which was planned from 1971, became an art event in 1995.
The work for the installation of the project "The Gates, Central Park, New York, 1979–2005" began in 2005.
A total of 7532 gates, each 4.87 m high and up to 5.48 m wide, were placed over a length of 37km all over the parkways in Central Park. The gates, made of saffron-coloured fabric floated down from the horizontal end of the steel gates to 2.13 m above the ground. A flowing, billowing incomparable spectacle. Only 16 days later the installation was set to close. But what remains is the memory of a lost landscape.
Christo strictly refused sponsorship from the public or private sector and insisted that the projects be realised only for a limited period. This leads to an extraordinary concept: only the sale of the sketches, models and drawings made the realisation of the installations possible and only those documents ultimately bear witness to it. Christo is therefore a work of art in its own right, but also a building block – and not least a testimony to the creative process. Christo passed away in 2020.