BERLIN — Russian artist and provocation best known for his stunning mural on the Berlin Wall depicting Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev kissing East German leader Erich Honecker on the mouth Dmitry Vrubel died in Berlin on Saturday. he was 62 years old.
His wife and longtime artistic partner Victoria Timofeeva said the cause was heart failure linked to Covid-19 infection.
In 1990, when Germany was reunified, Mr. Vrubel was one of 117 artists from 21 countries to land on the surviving part of the Berlin Wall, which had fallen the previous year. Using paint and ladders, he recreated a larger-than-life version of his 1979 photo of Brezhnev and Honecker kissing.
Below that he wrote captions in Russian and German.
By that time, communism had collapsed all over the world, and the Soviet Union was not long in this world. Mr. Honecker lost his job, Mr. Brezhnev died.
But the mural took on a life of its own as a subversive commentary on the debauched ways of a dying system.
“More than any other work of art, it symbolizes the peaceful victory of an outdated communist leader over a dubious empire,” said the German newspaper Der Spiegel. I have written in 2009.
Berlin’s daily Tagesspiegel called it “a symbol of peace, love and all kinds of transgressions”.
The image became a symbol of bohemian, graffiti-filled artistic Berlin in the 1990s. More than 30 years later, he is still one of Berlin’s most photographed murals, reproduced on countless T-his shirts, mugs and postcards.
Vrubel said he copied the image from a photo he saw in the French magazine Paris Match. This photo was taken in 1979 on the occasion of his 30th anniversary in East Germany by French photojournalist Regis Boss in East Berlin, just a few miles away from the place that would later become famous.
The sight of two elderly heads of state kissing sloppily on the mouth shocks many modern Western viewers, many of whom the image is purely a creation of the artist’s imagination. However, the gesture was a particular tradition among communist leaders, who used it to symbolize their solidarity.
Friends thought Vrubel was crazy for wanting to paint the Berlin Wall, a relic of a bygone era, he said. 2013 interview With the government-funded Goethe Institute. But he knew he was onto something.
“I had no doubts about it,” he said. “It was a lot of fun.”
Indeed, the satirical simplicity and shocking power of this painting resonated so much that other leaders often copied it, replacing Mr. Brezhnev and Mr. Honecker.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the mural briefly depicts former German Chancellor-turned-Russian energy lobbyist Gerhard Schroeder on canvas embracing Russian President Vladimir V. Putin. It was covered with a picture of
Dmitri Vrubel was born on July 14, 1960 in Moscow, the only child of two engineers.
He started drawing at the age of 15 and studied at the Department of Graphic Arts at the Moscow State VI Lenin Pedagogical Institute. He married at the age of 18 and had his three children with his first wife.
In addition to her, he has three sons – Mikhail, Alexander and Artemy. daughter Natalia. and her four grandchildren.
After painting the Berlin mural, Vrubel returned to Moscow in 1990 and had some success in 2001 with a limited edition calendar that captured Putin’s 12 moods.
In 2009, after his murals became a must-see on his Berlin itinerary, he returned to Berlin to redraw the murals.
The East Side Gallery artist collective, which maintains the mural-filled wall, asked the artists to clean the surface and repaint the famous piece with a more durable paint. Vrubel was initially hesitant, knowing that he was only being paid €3,000 (about $3,000) for the artists’ efforts.
It was his only financial reward for his work. He didn’t have the copyright on his images and he didn’t get a cent from the merchandise because it was his art in public, she said Timofeeva.
Vrubel thought the second version was an improvement. “In these 20 years I have become a better painter,” he told Spiegel in 2009.
Having settled in Berlin in 2010, he has become a regular member of the Russian expat community. Prenzlauer made him and Timofeeva open his studio in a small exhibition space in the Berg district. There I could see people making art and interacting with them.
Among his other works in Berlin was the Gospel Project, a series of paintings that focused on the faces of both celebrities and ordinary people.
“He took boring pictures from newspapers that nobody saw and turned them into art,” said Timofeeva. “That’s how he did it.”
Most recently, in the medium of virtual reality, we have created an exhibition space that can be viewed through virtual reality goggles. It gave him what he had been craving for so long: a canvas of unlimited size, Ms. Timofeeva said.
Vrubel also painted a second little-known mural on the Berlin Wall in 1990, “Thank you, Andrei Sakharov.” This is a tribute to the nuclear physicist who developed thermonuclear weapons before becoming a dissident and human rights activist.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mr Vrubel became an outspoken critic of the war.
“Since February, he was burning before my eyes because of this situation,” said Timofeeva, who was born in Odessa, Ukraine. “He was so angry, so sad, so embarrassed.”
But he will forever be known for one piece that came to him in an instant.
“When I first saw the Berlin Wall, I knew exactly what I wanted to paint: Brezhnev and Honecker,” he said in a 2013 interview.
“Berlin pictures,” he added, “for the Germans.”
Milana Mazaeva Contributed to reporting from Washington.