Dmitri Vrúbel was a Russian plastic artist who painted shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which is one of the main tourist attractions in the German capital.
The author of the famous graffiti of the kiss between Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and the President of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) Erich Honecker He has died in Berlin, according to German media reports on Monday.
Dmitri Vrubel (Moscow, 1960) was a Russian plastic artist whose most famous work was the graffiti he painted on the Berlin Wall shortly after it fell, in the spring of 1991, and which has since become one of the main tourist attractions of the German capital.
Located in the section of the wall known as ‘East Side Gallery’, in the old east, the painting shows Brezhnev and Honecker kissing on the mouth, with a caption that reads in German and Russian “My God, help me survive this deadly love“.
The mural, removed in 2009 as part of the wall’s restoration and later replicated by the artist at the request of local authorities, was inspired by a photograph showing the two communist leaders celebrating 30 years of existence of the GDRin 1979.
In 2001, Vrúbel and his wife, fellow artist Victoria Timofeyeva, created a calendar with portraits of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, which they called “Putin’s 12 Moods”, which unexpectedly became a best-seller in Russia.
Descendant of the modernist pioneer Mikhail Vrubel, the artist had lived in Berlin since 1990 and in recent years was active in the ranks of the Pirate Party; He died last Sunday at the age of 62 from heart complications after contracting covid.