Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, who died on 18 November, 2009, was one half of the husband-and-wife artistic team Christo and Jeanne-Claude, known for their spectacular but temporary ‘environmental’ art works.

After meeting in 1958, they began their career by creating imaginative shop fronts, but they had much loftier ambitions – literally.

For the 1968 documenta exhibition in Kassel they hoisted a 5,600 m3 polyethylene air package 280 feet in the air, making it visible for 25km around. The artwork was on display for a mere 10 hours and cost $70,000. One of the most remarkable things about Christo and Jeanne-Claude was that they raised the funds for their ambitious projects themselves.

Among these projects was the Wrapped Reichstag, a complete covering of the German parliament building with 100,000 m2 of fabric in 1995. Other international landmarks they ‘wrapped’ included Sydney’s Little Bay in 1969 and the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris in 1984.

Their most recent large-scale project was titled The Gates and consisted of 7,503 vinyl ‘gates’ along 23 miles of pathways in Central Park in New York. The piece, shown during February 2005, cost a staggering $21 million and was again funded by about Christo and Jeanne-Claude through the sale of drawings and other artworks from earlier in their career.

Jeanne-Claude died at a New York hospital at the age of 74.