Dmitri Vrubel


Dmitri Vladimirovich Vrubel is a Russian painter. He is best known for his East Side Gallery-painting My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love, depicting the kissing communist leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker.
Vrubel was born in Moscow. His surname is a Russification of the common Polish surname Wróbel.

Work

Vrubel's most famous work is the graffiti piece, painted on the Berlin Wall entitled My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love which depicts the kissing communist leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker.
It was inspired by a photograph captured by photographer Regis Bossu depicting a socialist fraternal kiss between the leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honeckerin 1979, during a celebration of the 30 years of the GDR.
In 2009, the painting was removed by the authorities as part of a cleaning effort in order to have it repainted by Vrubel.

Other Works

In 2001, he and his wife, Viktoria Timofeyeva, created a large format calendar containing portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin 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.