PORTLAND – An exhibition of five decades of work by internationally recognized artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, known for their Gates project in Central Park, New York, last February, is on view at the Portland Museum of Art through Dec. 31.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Würth Museum Collection will feature approximately 85 works that showcase the entire artistic process of these two artists. This collection, shown for the first time in its entirety in the United States, includes early wrapped works from the 1950s, small preparatory sketches, collages with pencil drawings, maps, topography, and fabric used in projects, and photographs of large-scale finished public projects.

Famous for their fabric installations involving urban and rural sites, Christo and Jeanne-Claude have created some of the most controversial and compelling public artworks of the 20th century over their 47-year career, 44 of them creating art together. Whether they are wrapping the Reichstag in fabric or running a 24-1/2 mile fabric fence along the hills of California, their temporary artworks require decades of planning and collaboration. Christo and Jeanne-Claude are currently working on the Over the River: Project for the Arkansas River, Colorado.

All works in the exhibition come from the Würth Museum in Künzelsau, Germany, which holds the second-largest collection of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work in Europe. The objects were collected and donated by Reinhold Würth, a manufacturing magnate who was recently named one of the Top 200 World Collectors by ARTNews.

The exhibition will feature preparatory works for large projects including: Wrapped Coast, Project for Australia, Little Bay; Valley Curtain, Project for Rifle County, Colorado; Running Fence, Project for Sonoma and Marin Counties, California; Surrounded Islands, Project for Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida; The Pont Neuf Wrapped, Project for Paris; The Umbrellas, Joint Project for Japan and USA; Wrapped Reichstag, Project for Berlin; and The Gates, Project for Central Park, New York.

Both artists were born on June 13, 1935, he in Gabrovo, Bulgaria, and she in Casablanca, Morocco. After studying at the Fine Arts Academy in Sofia, Christo left Bulgaria in 1956. He ended up in Paris, where he met Jeanne-Claude in 1958, when her mother commissioned him to paint her portrait. Jeanne-Claude holds a degree in Latin and philosophy from the University in Tunis. In 1964, they moved from Paris to New York, where they still reside in the same apartment.

Inspired by Russian artist Taitlin’s constructivist notion of utilizing “real materials in a real space,” Christo began “wrapping” everyday objects in the late 1950s. As the scale of the projects became larger and more complex, Christo and Jeanne-Claude began to work collaboratively. They used just Christo’s name to represent both artists until 1994, when they became Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Christo and Jeanne-Claude pay the entire cost of their artworks themselves, which allows them total freedom in their work. They earn all of the money through the sale of the preparatory studies, early works from the 1950s and 1960s, and original lithographs.

A comprehensive, fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition and is available in the Museum Store. The catalogue will include an essay by Professor Dieter Ronte, director of the Kunsthalle in Bonn, Germany, who has previously written on the Würth collection.