Born June 13, 1935 like her later husband Christo. She first met him in Paris in 1958, when he had just fled from the communistic Bulgaria.
While she was eduated in Switzerland and France and finished her academic studies of latin and philosophy in 1952, he was studying arts at the Fine Arts Academy in Sofia and in Vienna. In 1964 they moved to New York, where they developed steadily growing ideas.
Wrapping was their topic.
- In 1961 they wrapped barrels of oil in Cologne.
- In 1969 they wrapped a part of a coast in Australia.
- In 1995 they wrapped the german Reichstag (photo here) [1]
- And in 2005 they made “The Gates [2]” in New York’s Central Park.
It is said Jeanne-Claude and Christo often took separate airplanes. If one airplane crashed and one of them died the other one would be able to maintain their work. Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon passed away on wednesday November 18, 2009 in a Hospital in New York.