Dobar den! Or less formally, Zdravei. Or, hello to my reader(s) in Bulgaria. Seeing that country come up on the readership statistics for this blog rang a bell in the far reaches of my brain somewhere. So I checked on the internet, and my vague memory turned out to be correct: Christo, one of the most famous, some might say notorious, artists of the late twentieth century was born in Bulgaria. Christo, 'Wrapped Reichstag', 1995 He left for the west when he was in his twenties and studying in Prague. Before he met Jeanne-Claude in Paris in 1958 and began the lifelong collaboration with her, he painted portraits to make a living. I thought it would be fun to try and track down one of these pictures on the internet, but so far I've had no luck. Maybe I didn't search long enough, but I wonder also if Christo destroyed his early work once he started getting known for wrapping things up. Many well-known artists have these dark pasts, or a line of work which completely c...
Artist Philip Hartigan talks about art, interviews other artists, and more