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  Drawing Modern: Works from the Agnes Gund Collection > Highlights of the Exhibition > Christo (American, born Bulgaria 1935) Valley Curtain, Project for Colorado, 1972
 
 
Christo (American, born Bulgarian 1935)
Valley Curtain, Project for Colorado, 1972
Collage, graphite, wax crayon, pastel, charcoal, fabric, topographic map
28 x 22 inches
© Christo

Christo (American, born Bulgaria 1935)
Valley Curtain, Project for Colorado, 1972

Christo and partner Jeanne-Claude have spent more than forty years transforming objects, people, landscapes, buildings, and even the air into sculptural and aesthetic experiences. The collages and drawings they produce are always done before the completion of the project. In addition to pencil, fabric, pastel, charcoal, and wax crayon, they often include engineering drawings, topographic maps, floor plans, measurement notations, and photographs. These multimedia groupings are also reminders that the projects, realized or not, cannot be understood through only one channel of representation.

Valley Curtain near Rifle, Colorado, considered their first project in the United States, involved the labor of more than one hundred workers. On August 10, 1972, they unfurled a 1,250-foot orange nylon fabric curtain across a Colorado valley and road. The curtain reached heights of 364 feet and concealed the other side of the valley. Valley Curtain was installed for only twenty-eight hours before strong winds necessitated taking it down.

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John/Fingerprint, 1983