Artwork on the Wall
Today, much of the former Berlin Wall is covered in murals and graffiti. It represents the world’s largest open air gallery. For many artists, creating work on the wall was an act of protest, celebration or commemoration.
Thierry Noir’s Cartoon Heads
In the 1980s an artist named Thierry Noir began painting on the Wall as a form of protest. Every day he would paint large, distorted murals of animals and people, which were intended to show how unnatural the Wall was. Due to the dangerous nature of this work, his artistic process was quick and often featured a few block colours.
© George M. Groutas. Some heads by Thierry Noir - East Side Gallery.
© Sean Marshall. My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love.
My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love
This mural was created by Dmitri Vrubel in 1990 after the Wall had fallen. The painting recreates a photograph from 1979 and shows Leonid Brezhnev (the leader of the Soviet Union) and Erich Honecker (the leader of the GDR), greeting each other with a socialist fraternal kiss. This was a special form of greeting between the politicians of socialist states. Vrubel’s painting is arguably one of the most famous artworks displayed on the Wall.
© Garrett Ziegler. East Side Gallery (Berlin Wall)
It Happened in November
Kani Alavi, a German-Iranian painter, created his work ‘Es Geschah im November’ (‘It Happened in November’) in 1990. It shows the night the Wall fell, with thousands of faces streaming through from East to West Berlin. A range of different emotions can be seen, including joy, confusion and anger.