Christo Value: Top Prices Paid at Auction

This preparatory drawing (1991) for one of Christo's most ambitious installations achieved its record-breaking price at the Unwrapped: The Hidden World of Christo and Jeanne-Claude sale at Sotheby's Paris in February 2021. This event, dedicated to the artist after his death, brought together an unprecedented collection of Christo’s mixed media and sculptural work. On such a momentous occasion, many of the works auctioned exceeded expectations - this drawing in particular achieved more than four times its high estimate. It documents Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s vision for the Californian half of the 1991 The Umbrellas project, which saw the simultaneous installation of 3,100 19ft umbrellas across two sites - blue ones in Japan and yellow ones in California. The drawing features Christo's characteristic style of collaged photographs, fabric samples, and detailed architectural notation.

A different preparatory drawing for The Umbrellas (1991) project achieved this impressive result at the same Sotheby's Paris sale in February 2021. This mixed media work offers insight into the planning of the 1,340 blue umbrellas installed in Ibaraki, Japan, rather than the yellow umbrellas in the US. Like its record-breaking counterpart, it is split across two landscape canvases, one much thinner than the other. It employs pencil, charcoal, pastels, and photo collage, to create a representation of the project where the contemporary reality of the space is overlaid with Christo’s artistic ambitions. The drawing's substantial value underscores the particular market enthusiasm for works related to The Umbrellas project, which stands as one of the artist's most geographically ambitious undertakings.

This 2002 two-piece mixed media drawing, which sold in Munich in December 2021, documents Christo's vision for The Gates (2005) - an installation that transformed New York's Central Park with 7,503 steel gates draped with saffron-coloured nylon fabric along 23 miles of park pathway. The gates were designed to resemble Japanese torii gates, often found at the entrance to Shinto shrines. The combination of black-and-white drawing with the proposed installation in vivid colour is distinctive of Christo’s artistic style, as is the blended use of multiple drawing materials and inclusion of a map. Created three years before the installation's realisation, but 23 years after the project’s conception, this drawing was produced during the mature phase of the project's planning, representing a significant amount of time and work, which adds to its appeal.

This 1983 mixed media drawing is the first US result on this list and achieved its notable sale at Sotheby’s New York in May 2021. It illustrates Christo's plan for surrounding 11 islands in Miami's Biscayne Bay with 6.5 million square feet of pink polypropylene fabric designed to resemble Monet’s water lilies. The project itself, introducing manmade materials into a natural environment, required three years of technical and ecological planning. The project did, however, have a positive impact on the local environment, as the artists involved cleared away 40 tonnes of rubbish from the islands while they worked. The pink rings only remained in place for two weeks, despite the lengthy planning process, but are credited with helping to establish Miami Beach as a thriving art destination.

A later preparatory drawing for The Gates (2005) project, created in 2003, sold at Sotheby's New York in September 2021. This work represents one of the final planning stages before the installation's realisation in 2005; and, when compared to the 2002 drawing higher up this list, demonstrates the constant evolution of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s artistic and pragmatic decisions. This later drawing uses a broader city map and illustrates an alternative method for attaching the fabric to the steel gates to ensure it blew more freely in the breeze.

Breaking from the dominance of preparatory drawings, this 1961 sculpture sold at Sotheby's Paris in February 2021, almost tripling its high estimate. As a result, it holds the record for the highest-value Christo sculpture. Package is one of Christo's early wrapped objects, and represents a crucial developmental stage in his artistic practice, presaging his later monumental installations. Christo described works from this period in his career as “still lifes;” the works were not about the wrapping itself but about the texture of the objects wrapped in the fabric. The lacquer applied to the final result ensured that the piece could not move or change over time, preserving its shape and texture.

This 1985 mixed media drawing for Christo and Jeanne-Claude's temporary transformation of Paris' oldest bridge achieved its result at Sotheby's Paris in February 2021. The work documents the duo’s plans for wrapping the Pont Neuf in 450,000 square feet of sandstone-coloured fabric. Planning for the project was initially denied by Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac in 1982; however, an aide to the mayor snuck the permit back into the mayor’s stack of approvals, and it was inadvertently signed in 1984. When Chirac tried to rescind his approval, Jeanne-Claude was able to convince him not to. Now one of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s most iconic projects, the installation drew in three million visitors during its two-week appearance in September 1985.

This 1961 sculpture, another rare early example of Christo's wrapped works, sold at Christie's Paris in December 2014. Like Package (Empaquetage) (1961) from the same year, this piece represents a crucial early exploration of the artist’s wrapping technique. Smaller wrapped sculptural works such as this pre-date Christo’s collaboration with Jeanne-Claude, which began later in 1961. Wrapped Object (1961) is, therefore, one of the last works Christo completed alone, adding to its significance and contextual appeal to collectors. The work's significant result, achieving a record-breaking sale well before the market surge of 2021, demonstrates longstanding collector appreciation.

The most recent sale on this list, this particular preparatory drawing for the Pont Neuf project, drawn in 1983, achieved this result at Sotheby's Paris in September 2022. This conceptual drawing was created earlier than the other Pont Neuf drawing on this list, but still eight years after the project’s ideation, providing an insight into the redevelopment phase after its initial rejection by Mayor Jacques Chirac. Before its sale in 2022, this work was housed in a private collection in Japan and had only been publicly exhibited in Satani Gallery, Tokyo.

This 1964 mixed media drawing sold at Sotheby's New York in November 2015. The work relates to Christo's Store Fronts series, an early exploration of architectural intervention that marked the beginning of his collaboration with Jeanne-Claude and preceded his monumental wrapped buildings and landscapes. The Store Fronts Project involved the pair taking inspiration from around their new home in New York City, and building storefronts out of found windows, doors, and other materials. As such, this preliminary drawing, measuring 110 x 160 x 13cm, incorporates some of these materials, including plywood, metal, and plexiglass - giving it a three-dimensional sculptural element.