OUR Dmitry BrubelRussian artist and creator of the famous graffiti depicting the leader of the Soviet Union. Leonid Brezhnev kiss the then leader of East Germany on the lips Erich Honecker titled “God: help me survive in the midst of this deadly love”, he breathed his last on August 14 in Berlin at the age of 62.

Many may not have known Bruebel, but his most famous work was the graffiti he painted on the Berlin Wall. side of East Berlin before it was demolished.

Photo with a kiss of two leaders, taken by a French photographer Resi Bossioua friend from Paris showed Bruebel, writes the Russian website Snob.ru.

When he saw the photo himself, he said then: “It was a disgusting, disgusting thing, at first I almost withered, but nevertheless, as is usually the case, I wanted to capture something that is not fixed in art, and this work somehow began It becomes an obsession for me.”

The poet and artist saw the first sketches of the future of graffiti. Dmitry Prigov, who told him: “It would be nice to do it on the Berlin Wall.” Bruebel laughed that it was unrealistic.

At its beginning 1990gallery, which he created in his apartment, the gallery owner visited Alexander Brodovsky who came from Berlin to find artists for the first exhibition of the Soviet avant-garde in East Germany.

Brodofsky invited Bruebel, asking him to paint on the Berlin Wall.

Many of his acquaintances described the proposal as “stupid” because the Berlin Wall would be torn down in two months, and suggested that he go to West Berlin and hold exhibitions in galleries there. Bruebel decided, despite his doubts, to go to East Germany.

Arriving in Berlin and at that point of the Wall where he would paint, there was a truck with paints, and in some places the artists painted their works, and this point began to be called East Side Gallery (east gallery).

Russian philosopher and friend of Dmitry Brubel, Alexander Marozovreferring to this graffiti, writes in the newspaper New newspaper Europethat “this work of his is almost daily mentioned as an introductory illustration in texts concerning the collapse of the “eastern bloc” and the history of the modern USSR. This image has become the most massive symbol of “Sovietization” and liberation from it.”

Morozov, referring to the phrase under the graffiti “Lord, help me survive among this deadly love,” says that although its origin is unknown, it resembles a saying from the Bible.

He even points out that “this image was originally perceived as a satirical image … In the world, these fiery kisses caused mixed feelings. It goes without saying that they represented a manifestation of “love”. Everyone understood this. But what does “love” mean in this case? These were publicly expressed brotherly feelings, which were emphasized, blocking the currents of violence, general sadness, while at the same time communicating some form of common coexistence. Visually, they embodied the idea of ​​”brotherhood”, but the world was arranged in such a way that there was a “Big Brother” in it. And it was Brezhnev. Historians of political history say that Brezhnev, when asked to decide the issue of Czechoslovakia, said: “I love Sasha (Alexander Dupcek – ss)”. Whom she certainly loved. But this “did not stop” him (the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968).

Marozov told Novaya Gazeta-Europe that three weeks before Bruebel was hospitalized in a coma, the Russian artist was busy with his photographs. Dmitry Kozatsky (under the pseudonym “Orest”, in the “Azov” battalion).

“Brupel literally cried when he talked about the war, about these pictures, about how artistically they were made. He wanted to make a VR (virtual reality) exhibition with these photos, how to make a museum for Butz using VR technologies. He was looking for ways to reinforce the visual evidence of the war with literary sayings. For him, 30 years later, a direct line was drawn between the “kiss of death” at the Berlin Wall and this violence unleashed by Russian troops in Ukraine in 2022.”

Sources: Novaya Gazeta.Europe, Snob.ru.