site.btaAt Christo and Jeanne-Claude Centre in Gabrovo, BTA Launches Its New LIK Issue Dedicated to Pioneering Artistic Duo

BTA launched Wednesday the June issue of its LIK magazine paying tribute to Bulgarian-born pioneering art duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

2025 celebrates the artists’ 90th birth anniversary.  It also marks three major anniversaries related to the couple’s work: 40 years since The Pont Neuf Wrapped in Paris, 30 years since Wrapped Reichstag in Berlin, and 20 years since The Gates installation in New York’s Central Park.

The LIK launch event was held simultaneously at the Christo and Jean-Claude Centre in Gabrovo and BTA’s MaxiM Hall in Sofia, with the participation of the BTA national press clubs in the country and abroad via video link.

BTA Director General Kiril Valchev said in his opening remarks that Christo Javacheff is “forever a Bulgarian from Gabrovo”. “The presentation of LIK magazine today is a suitable occasion for the formal settlement of the status of the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Centre," he emphasized, adding that the centre has the support of BTA. He noted that “it is better to like yourself as you are because happiness is living in harmony with yourself, which Christo has demonstrated as well”. "Freedom and unfreedom have no nationality," Valchev said.

LIK’s Editor-in-Chief Georgi Lozanov said that the entire art of Christo is “one big lesson in freedom”. I think we all need that, and I’m glad we can offer the pages of LIK magazine to reach as wide an audience as possible,” he said. “Christo and Jeanne-Claude managed to turn their love and iconic partnership into a creative method. They succeeded in challenging state political institutions to act as cultural institutions, allowing the Reichstag to be wrapped and the Paris City Hall to permit wrapping Pont Neuf. When you transform political institutions - even briefly - into cultural ones, you get a different sense of freedom and civility, which is what Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s art conveys. This is also part of LIK’s policy - to connect with Western culture and, more broadly, global culture,” said Lozanov.

The curator of the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Center, Margarita Dorovska, said that the Centre is a place for creating art. “This center is for young artists. While it will showcase the works of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, it is equally a place for creating art. That’s why the very first thing that happened in this building was to fill it with artists,” she said.

Gabrovo Mayor Tanya Hristova argued that Christo's connection with Gabrovo has always been part of his desire to challenge not only himself, because he was in harmony with himself, but also everything around him, and most of all he sought to send messages to humanity. She recalled that the idea of ​​a centre dedicated to Christo was born as a purely grassroot initiative in 1992. "People then recognized the importance of Christo both for his hometown and for Bulgaria, they were the main driving force for this," she emphasized.

National Academy of Arts (NAA) Rector Georgi Yankov pointed out that the most valuable lesson that can be learned from Christo is how a person can pursue his goals, as he convinced city governments, ecologists, bureaucrats, and administrations to realize his projects for decades. "He has consistently funded his own projects by selling his drawings and sketches. He exemplifies an artist motivated by strong ideals and remains distant from commercial interests," Yankov said. 

The Graphic Art Gallery in Varna holds a valuable collection of 35 signed photographs and posters by the iconic artist duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude, dating from 1969 to 1984. The collection features images of their landmark projects such as the Wrapped Coast in Australia, Wrapped Reichstag in Berlin, Wrapped Pont Neuf in Paris, and others, captured by photographers Harry Shunk, Wolfgang Volz, and Jeanne-Claude herself. Some of the photos were shown during the LIK launch event in Varna by  Velina Grebenska, acting director of the Varna gallery.

Yambol Art Gallery curator Stoyka Tsingova said at a Yambol LIK launch event that Christo and Jeanne-Claude is a brand that creates for freedom which they express through the open spaces they transform, and through the scale, the selection of materials, even the fact that their works are short-lived, on Wednesday.

Art historian and director of the Kazanlak Art Gallery, Plamen Petrov, emphasized the need for further research into the life of Christo Javacheff (Christo) and his connections with other Bulgarian artists. Speaking at BTA’s National Press Club in Kazanlak during the LIK launch, Petrov called for greater scholarly attention from the Bulgarian art community, suggesting that the new Christo and Jeanne-Claude Centre in Gabrovo could inspire such efforts. He highlighted the link between Christo and renowned Kazanlak artist Dechko Uzunov, recounting the rediscovery of a previously overlooked portrait by Uzunov.

Blagoevgrad Art Gallery Director Ivan Milushev called Christo “an exceptional phenomenon in contemporary art”. He emphasized that with his art and ideas, Christo has largely changed contemporary fine art, adding that over the years, Christo has established himself as a real colossus in world contemporary art. Milushev also said that he was proud of the fact that Christo was Bulgarian.

Journalist Evgeniya Atanasova-Teneva said that to be a foreigner was the dividing line in Christo's life, which has defined a lot in his art and in his fate. Atanasova-Teneva paid particular attention to Christo's relationship with Bulgaria, a topic that the journalist defines as one of the most tragic in Christo's life.

Daniel Nenchev, also a journalist, said that Christo’s escape from Bulgaria was not an act of renouncing his homeland, but a conscious liberation from the political and cultural constraints of the totalitarian regime. He said that the art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude raises questions about language, beauty, and meaning, topics that “divide society” and are “points of conflict,” but it is precisely through them that art fulfills its social role.

Ruse Art Gallery Director Eslitsa Popova called Christo "a phenomenon in world art” and “the forerunner of land art”. She emphasized that the art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude is a great gesture both as an artistic effort, as a social, environmental, and as a thought in general about who people are in nature, how people interact with nature and how they live. 

Alexander Doichinov, director of the National High School of Arts in Sliven believes that Christo and Jeanne-Claude symbolize a new form of monumentality that reflects the spirit of contemporary times. He argued that the couple's legacy goes beyond art - their collaboration is also studied at Harvard as a business model. Jeanne-Claude was not merely Christo’s muse but an active partner with an economics background who enabled their projects.

Vladimir Kirov, artist and teacher at the National High School for Applied Arts in Troyan said that the work of Christo Javacheff is in the mandatory cirriculum in art schools across Bulgaria.

Dobrich Art Gallery Director Nedko Nedkov said that Christo and Jeanne-Claude give contemporary art a new face. “Very often, art historians and experts say that Christo's art is not meant to be liked or disliked, but rather to be accepted or not accepted. The impact of his work is truly significant in terms of vision, scale, and the creative process,” he said.

Julia and Marian Bahovski, a Romanian-Bulgarian couple united by love and a shared passion for the art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, have followed the late artist’s work across Europe. Speaking at the launch of the June issue of LIK at the BTA Press Club in Bucharest, they shared vivid memories, photos, and mementos from their travels to Italy, the UK, and France.

Miryana Simonyan, cultural activities expert at the Bulgarian Cultural and Information Centre in Skopje, was a guest at the BTA National Press Club in Skopje for the presentation of the June issue of LIK magazine, dedicated to pioneering artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude. She said that Christo is not widely known in North Macedonia, but his art is intriguing, provocative, and inspiring. 

Serbian art historian and philosopher Dr. Davor Dzalto believes that the wrapping of the Reichstag was an iconic artwork that defined an entire era. “This is one of the most significant - if not the most significant - works by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. According to Christo himself, it was a symbolic act marking the reunification of Germany and the return of Berlin as one of Europe’s important capitals, one of the world’s cultural centers,” Dr. Dzalto told BTA. 

Lyudmil Veselinov, Regional Governor of Pernik, said that Christo and Jeanne-Claude created a unique language in contemporary art, where aesthetics, space, and time intertwine in an unparalleled way. According to him, Christo and Jeanne-Claude's work avoids unnecessary rhetoric, focusing instead on experience, scale, idea, and emotion. “They don’t just create art—they transform the way we perceive the environment around us. It’s art that ‘resides’ in the world, yet transcends geographic and cultural boundaries,” he said.

According to Prof. Emilia Konstantinova, Dean of the Art Theory Department at the Academy of Music, Dance and Fine Arts in Plovdiv, The Floating Piers, which graced Lake Iseo in Italy for 16 days in 2016, were “the brightest star in the sky of the installation arts.” “It was a composition forming a single whole with nature. An artwork which keeps memories forever, like the stars which still illuminate the night sky after ceasing to exist,” Konstantinova said during a presentation of the new LIK in Plovdiv.