He was famous for painting Soviet Union leader Leonid Brezhnev and East German leader Erich Honecker kissing in the ruins of the Berlin Wall. The Russian naturalized German painter Dimitri Vrubel, who signed one of the best-known works of the post-Cold War period with his “Kiss of the Socialist Brotherhood”, an iconic monument photographed by thousands of tourists every year visiting the German capital, has died. Sunday in the capital at the age of 62. Art Newspaper Russia editor-in-chief Milena Orlova announced the news of his disappearance with a short message posted on Facebook and the cause of Vrubel’s death was not disclosed. His wife, the artist Viktoria Timofeyeva, had written on social media in recent weeks that Vrubel had been hospitalized with the coronavirus last June and subsequently put into an artificial coma due to heart failure.
The graffiti
The graffiti that had immediately consecrated Vrubel as an internationally renowned street-artist is officially titled “God, help me to survive this deadly love” (1990): it was inspired by a real photograph from 1979 in which Brezhnev and Honecker kiss in occasion of the celebrations for the thirty years since the birth of the GDR, the German Democratic Republic. In 2009 the graffiti was repainted by Vrubel himself after it had been vandalized and worn by time.
The work (365 cm × 480 cm) is part of the East Side Gallery memorial, a permanent open-air gallery on the longest surviving section of the Berlin Wall on Mühlenstraße, between the Ostbahnhof and the Oberbaumbrücke along the Spree. It consists of a series of murals painted directly on a 1,316-meter-long remnant of the Wall, located on Mühlenstraße in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg.
Chi era Dimitri Vrubel
Born in Moscow on June 14, 1960, Vrubel had studied at the Moscow State Pedagogical University and moved to Berlin in 1990, shortly after the fall of the Wall and German reunification. In the Soviet capital he had also studied at art school, even though he had not graduated. However, in 1983 he was accepted as a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR.
The artistic career
Vrubel was an early and constant dissident artist. In 1986 he organized unofficial – and illegal – art exhibitions in his Moscow apartment and the following year he joined the “Club of the Avant-garde” (Russian abbreviation Klava), which included some of the best unofficial cultural figures in the world. era, including the artist and writer Dmitry Prigov and the poet Lev Rubinstein. In 2020, in Moscow, Vrubel witnessed the defense of two curators accused of inciting religious enmity for an exhibition entitled “Forbidden Art-2006” at the Sakharov Center. At the time he said: “We are once again in a country where the state supports a position and an aesthetic and calls everything else illegal. It’s horrible.”
The artist, who often appeared in public wearing a black hat, was often criticized for his provocative, sometimes political, and often misunderstood works. He replied to the controversy by claiming that his life’s mission was one: “To bring art and people back together.”
The calendar with “Putin’s 12 moods”
Among his works, Vrubel created in 2001 a calendar with portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin entitled “Putin’s 12 Moods”, which had an unexpected sales success among the Russian population. In one of the portraits Putin looks stern and frowning, in another his face reveals the slightest smile, and in yet another he sits cross-legged in his judo suit.