Russian graffiti artist Dmitry Vrubel, greatest identified for his well-known 1990 mural on the Berlin Wall depicting the Soviet chief Leonid Brezhnev kissing East Germany chief Erich Honecker, has died aged 62.
He handed away on Sunday in Berlin following a two-month-long sickness. He was hospitalised on 20 June with coronavirus earlier than medical doctors put him into an induced coma one month later because of coronary heart failure.
“[Dima] by no means complained about his coronary heart, he didn’t drink or smoke for a few years,” his spouse, the artist Victoria Timofeeva, wrote on Fb on 17 July. “Dima was quickly placed on an LVAD [left ventricle assist device] however yesterday the appropriate aspect of his coronary heart stopped pumping blood [so] to save lots of vitality, his mind, and to permit him to get better and relaxation, Dima was put into a synthetic coma… He’s preventing with all his may, medical doctors from one of many world’s greatest cardiology clinics are serving to him across the clock.”
Timofeeva, who had requested individuals around the globe to hope for her husband’s restoration on daily basis whereas he was in hospital, mentioned he was “tormented” by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Vrubel proven together with his work
Earlier than shifting to Berlin in 1990, Vrubel was a member of the Artists’ Union of the USSR and a part of the Avant-Garde Membership (KLAVA) artwork group in his native Moscow. He was closely concerned within the underground artwork scene and organised unlawful exhibitions in his condominium over the past years of the Soviet Union.
He moved to Berlin in 1990 aged 30 and painted the mural of the Communist leaders kissing, titled My God, Assist Me to Survive This Lethal Love, the identical yr, which catapulted him to on the spot fame. The picture is a replica of {a photograph} of Brezhnev assembly Honecker taken in 1979 by French photographer Régis Bossu.
The work was eliminated by the town authorities in 2009 in an effort to revive your complete wall and the artistic endeavors painted on it, a lot of which had by then deteriorated from publicity to automobile fumes and graffiti. “My image is ruined,” Vrubel instructed Der Spiegel on the time. The Berlin metropolis council paid the artist €3,000 to breed his work. Although the picture has been used on numerous souvenirs bought close to the location of the wall, Vrubel mentioned the 2009 replica charge was the one revenue he ever produced from the mural.
One other of his notable works, a preferred pin-up calendar titled The 12 Moods of Putin, was created in 2001 with Timofeeva. Every month exhibits Russian President Vladimir Putin gripped by a unique emotion. Vruebel’s works are within the collections of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the Berlin Nationwide Gallery.
