The landscape artist Christo recently passed away, a news that has plunged the contemporary art world into mourning. With his large-scale installations, Christo revolutionized landscape art with his wife Jeanne-Claude. One will remember the islands of Miami surrounded by a pink tarpaulin, the huge inflatable footbridge on Lake Iseo, or the monumental installations of empty petrol cans floating on the water of a London lake.

Christo was born Christo Vladimirov Javacheff in Bulgaria in 1937, but he left the country in 1957 and travelled throughout Europe before settling in Paris the following year. There he met Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, who became his artistic partner and wife. From their first collaboration in 1961, they embodied a unique way of working. Together, their risk-taking and tenacity enabled them to create elaborate installations that brought thousands of people together and made us admire natural landscapes in a different way by sharpening our environmental awareness.