Christo Javacheff (June 13, 1935 – May 31, 2020) was born in Gabrovo, Bulgaria and began private art lessons at the age of six, supported by his parents who invited visiting artists to their home. Christo is best known for his large-scale environmental installations, usually landmarks and landscape wrapped in fabric, but he began this trend in 1958, wrapping household items. He attended the Sofia Academy of Fine Arts in 1953 and then the Vienna Fine Arts Academy when he fled to Austria in the midst of war. In 1958, Christo met his wife Jean-Claude Denat de Guillebon. The two became known as Christo and Jean-Claude, working together on their massive, often pain-staking, and sometimes controversial art installations until Jean-Claude’s death in 2009. These installations were funded by the sale of their own artworks, particularly the planning sketches and models for their installations. Christo’s works are held in collections such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Kusthaus, Switzerland; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.