Christo created a series of relief-like surface structures, his Cratères series, after visiting an exhibition with works by Jean Dubuffet in 1959. The many thick layers of dark brown paint almost give the works the character of objects. They thus exemplify Christo's increasing interest in the three-dimensional object.

In some of the works, Christo attached empty, used paint cans to the base in various places before covering the whole work with a mixture of sand, enamel and glue, creating a textural mesh of furrows, trenches and craters that penetrate the pictorial space. Christo transforms a horizontal crater landscape into a vertical wall relief, comparable to Daniel Spoerri's trap-pictures in which the remains of a meal are attached to a table top and then upended to hang vertically.

Other works in the Cratères series, with their overlapping surface structure and three-dimensionality, are reminiscent of Lucio Fontana. Fontana's controlled destruction of the canvas made a strong impression on Christo. Punctures and slashes in the jagged surface of Christo's works allow a glimpse of the wall behind the work. The relief does not protrude so much as it draws the observer’s gaze inside the picture, from where the paint pours forth like a river of lava.

Excerpt from the book Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Early Works 1958-64 by Matthias Koddenberg (Bönen: Kettler, 2009). Edited by the author in 2011.

Virtual Tour

Click here to take a Virtual Tour of the exhibition Early Works 1958-69 on view at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany, 2001. To return, click on the signature on top of the page.