TORONTO, CANADA.- World-renowned contemporary artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude have surrounded 11 Florida islands in brilliant pink floating fabric, suspended a curtain of orange fabric between two Rocky Mountain slopes and, in February 2005, will install 7,500 vinyl gates with saffron colour fabric panels in New York's Central Park. Through May 15, 2005, the Art Gallery of Ontario will feature these visionary artists in the exhibition Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Works from the Weston Collection. By presenting 39 of Christo's preparatory drawings and collages created before their projects are realized, and photographs of the realized works, this exhibition will provide a captivating look at the development of some of the largest and most spectacular temporary artworks of our time.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude's outdoor installations require years of planning, millions of dollars paid by the artists, the labour of hundreds and the cooperation of communities, land owners and government authorities. The drawings and collages produced in advance of these projects reflect the refinements and adjustments made throughout the process of bringing the installations to life. Combining techniques, including graphite, wax crayon, enamel paint, charcoal, pastel, photographs, fabric and topographical maps, Christo creates vivid and evocative depictions of the couple's projects before they are realized. Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Works from the Weston Collection captures the artists' massive projects as ideas rendered in a beautiful state of anticipation, from one of their earliest works, Wrapped Coast, Little Bay, Australia, 1968-69, in which the duo wrapped a portion of Australian coastline in 90 thousand square metres of erosion control mesh and 56.3 kilometres of rope, to their latest endeavour, The Gates, Central Park, New York 1979-2005, in which the artists will line 23 miles of park footpaths with 16-foot high vinyl gate structures adorned with free hanging fabric panels.

"Christo and Jeanne-Claude are the perfect artists to be presented by the Gallery as we move into our Transformation AGO project," said AGO Director and CEO Matthew Teitelbaum. "Their endeavours begin with visionary ideas, and their completed works are celebrations of the great things that can happen when people, resources and excitement are mobilized into action by innovative thinking."

Christo and Jeanne-Claude were both born on June 13, 1935, Christo in Gabrovo to a Bulgarian industrialist family and Jeanne-Claude in Casablanca, Morocco to a French military family. They met in Paris in 1958 when Christo was commissioned to do a portrait of Jeanne-Claude's mother. The couple's earliest collaborations were the relatively quick outdoor interventions, Stacked Oil Barrels, Dockside Packages at Cologne Harbor in 1961 and Iron Curtain Wall of Oil Barrels, Rue Visconti, Paris 1961-62. In 1964 Christo and Jeanne-Claude, with their son Cyril, established permanent residence in New York, where their installations began to escalate in size, resulting in a steady increase in public consultation, involvement and expense to the artists. Among the celebrated projects from this period represented in Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Works from the Weston Collection are: Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California, 1972-76, a 39-kilometre screen of white fabric that required permissions from 59 ranchers, 18 public hearings, three sessions in California Superior Courts, and a 400-page Environmental Impact Report; Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida, 1980-83, which employed 430 workers including engineers, ecologists, seamstresses and divers; The Umbrellas, Japan-USA, 1984-91, which filled an inland valley in each country simultaneously with a total of 3,100 umbrellas; and Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1971-95, a work that required 25 years of planning and negotiating and a vote in German parliament to proceed.

In order to remain pure in their artistic intent and maintain complete control over their projects, Christo and Jeanne-Claude accept no outside funding or sponsorship. They generate the financial resources for their artistic ventures solely through the sale of Christo's preparatory artworks, early works from the 50s and 60s and original lithographs.

Inspired by the planning and execution of the artist's massive projects, Galen Weston, Chairman and President of George Weston Limited, has amassed one of North America's largest private collections of Christo's preparatory artworks. Weston says, "The joy of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's work is that each drawing or collage is a preparation for something real and monumental. Their work really does make me raise my head and wonder if I'm thinking as broadly or as imaginatively as I should." He is generously lending the entire collection to the AGO for this exhibition - the first time the collection has been shown publicly in Canada.