Dmitri Vrubel
Encyclopedia
East Side Gallery
The East Side Gallery is an international memorial for freedom. It is a 1.3 km long section of the Berlin Wall located near the centre of Berlin on Mühlenstraße in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg.-Description:...
-painting My God, help me to survive this deadly love
My God, help me to survive this deadly love
My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love , sometimes referred to as the Fraternal Kiss , is a graffiti painting on the Berlin wall by Dmitri Vrubel, one of the best known of the Berlin wall graffiti paintings...
, depicting the kissing communist leaders Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...
and Erich Honecker
Erich Honecker
Erich Honecker was a German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic as General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1971 until 1989, serving as Head of State as well from Willi Stoph's relinquishment of that post in 1976....
.
The painting was inspired by the kiss they had in 1979, during the celebration of the 30 years of the GDR.
In 2009 the painting was destroyed by the authorities, in order to have it repainted by Vrubel.
In 2001, he and his wife, Viktoria Timofeyeva, created a limited edition large format calendar containing portraits of Russian President, Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
called "The 12 moods of Putin". Each page of the calendar portrayed a different image of Putin and was an unexpected hit with the Moscow population.