East Side Gallery - A Photowalk at the World's largest Open-Air Gal...

Dear Art-Fans,

about one year ago I visited the East Side Gallery in Berlin.

After the Berlin wall came down in November 1989, it was degraded very fast and only a few reminders were scattered across the city. The longest stretch of the original Wall was located at the Mühlenstraße in Berlin Friedrichshain.

In the period from February to September 1990 more than 118 artists from 21 countries painted 106 unique murals on this 1.3 km long part of the Berlin Wall. The artists wanted to express the joy of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War in Europe.

Since then the so called East Side Gallery became the world’s largest and longest-lasting open air gallery and an international memorial for freedom. Most of the paintings depict images of hope and redemption. Some have also gathered national fame, particularly the section of two men kissing.

After two-thirds of the paintings were badly damaged by erosion, graffiti, and vandalism, many of these were restored in 2009 and are now protected with wire fences.

Please enjoy my selection of works, that I photographed with an iPhone!

Dimitri Vrubel - Lord Help Me To Survive This Deadly Love

Sometimes referred to as the Fraternal Kiss (German: Bruderkuss), this graffiti painting is one of the best known of the Berlin wall graffiti paintings.

Created in 1990, the painting depicts Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker in a fraternal embrace, reproducing a photograph that captured the moment in 1979 during the 30th anniversary celebration of the foundation of the German Democratic Republic.

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Birgit Kinder - Test The Rest

The Trabi, the symbol of the turn is made of cardboard and plastic and breaks through the wall of iron and concrete, a system separated 28 years old, without any scratches.

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Willi Berger - Soli Deo Gloria

Tribute to the deceased artist and mentor of Berger, Hans Meisel. Banned in the Third Reich, concealed in the GDR now available with the copy of one of his works for the first time a public reputation.

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"Soli Deo gloria" is a Latin term for "Glory to God alone". The painting is a tribute to the last composition by J.S. Bach and the art of fugue.

At the bottom of the mural you can read: "Never again censorship in art!"

Georg Lutz - Untitled

Mikhail Gorbachev holding a steering wheel made of hammer and sickle (☭), a Communist symbol that was conceived during the Russian Revolution.

Gorbachev's policies of glasnost ("openness") and perestroika ("restructuring") and his reorientation of Soviet strategic aims contributed to the end of the Cold War.

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You can see a full size image without the graffiti here!

Jim Avignon - Doin It Cool For The East Side

I'm a huge fan of Jim Avignon, who is the founder of "Cheap Art" and also a musician. The former image from 1990 was replicated in 2000 and restored in 2009.

Avignon came in 2013 with friends and painted over the image remains in a public action and replaced it with a new version.

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Jim Avignon -Detail

Schamil Gimajev - Worlds People

This Gigantic work (more than 37m length) has "a clear message of peace through the history". You should check the whole work here!

Here is another detail:

Schamil Gimajev - Detail

Theodor Cheslav Tezhik - The Big Kremlins Wind

The words on top of the painting "Tempus fugit" are a Latin phrase, that usually translates into English as "time flies".

All of the russian leaders are painted upside down, because the new wind from the west mixed everything up.

Rough Westwind mixed by the Kremlin in Moscow, the hardliners also fall out, including Gorbachev.

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Below you can see an iron gate and a profile shot from the wall. As the actual border at this point was the river Spree, the wall was less heavy than I would have expected.