Decades before he and his late wife Jeanne-Claude were draping the Reichstag in cloth, Christo (born 1935) was creating much more modestly-sized packages in his Paris studio. These early objects, developed in the ferment of Nouveau Realisme assemblage art alongside artists such as Arman and Jacques Villegle, have come under scrutiny once more, as this intriguing phase in the history of the European avant garde has been increasingly revisited by art historians. One series of 12 sculptures by Christo from this period, made from oil barrels and metal scrap, was long thought lost to history. In fact the works have survived in photographs, very few of which have ever been published. Now, with the close collaboration of the artist himself, art historian Matthias Koddenberg has retrieved and reproduced these fascinating early works in this beautifully produced volume.