Press
If you are writing about the Wall Piece, or about my father, take what you need from this page. The pictures are yours to print. If something is missing, write to me and I will send it.
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BRUDERKUSS makes small objects carrying Berlin’s most photographed mural: the kiss between Brezhnev and Honecker that Dmitry Vrubel painted on the Berlin Wall in 1990. Each piece is 17 centimetres tall, painted and numbered by hand in Berlin by his son, Artemiy Vrubel, and holds an NFC chip that opens its own certificate.
Dmitry Vrubel painted “My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love” on the Berlin Wall in 1990. It became the best-known image of the East Side Gallery, and it has been reproduced on souvenirs ever since. Vrubel died in Berlin in 2022, and the rights to the mural stayed with his family. His son Artemiy Vrubel now makes the BRUDERKUSS Wall Piece in Berlin: a printed core, 17 centimetres tall, painted by hand to match the wall, then numbered, one at a time. An NFC chip inside each piece opens that piece’s certificate at verify.bruderkuss.art. The family makes them itself and has not licensed the work to anyone.
Background
The mural started as a news photograph. Régis Bossu shot Brezhnev and Honecker greeting each other in East Berlin in October 1979, at the thirtieth anniversary of the GDR. My father painted it on the wall eleven years later and wrote a line across it: “My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love.” The picture has been on postcards, mugs and fridge magnets ever since. Almost none of that money ever reached him.
He died in Berlin on 13 August 2022. I make the Wall Pieces here now. The core is printed, and everything after that is my hands: the paint, the image, the varnish, the chip, the number. It is why they take a while, and why no two come out quite the same.
The trade around the Berlin Wall is murky, so I would rather say this plainly. I am not selling you a fragment of the wall. Shops across the city sell “original” pieces of uncertain origin, most of them painted long after 1989. What I make is a new object, made by me, with my father’s picture on it and a number on the bottom.
The facts
- Object
- BRUDERKUSS Wall Piece, a small hand-painted object carrying the Bruderkuss mural
- Size
- 17 × 8 × 5.5 cm
- Made of
- A printed PETG core, painted by hand, with the image applied and varnished
- Edition
- Numbered by hand. No two come out quite the same.
- Certificate
- An NTAG215 chip in every piece opens its certificate at verify.bruderkuss.art
- Made by
- Artemiy Vrubel, in Berlin. Son of Dmitry Vrubel.
- Price
- €50, August 2026
- Sold at
- bruderkuss.art and Etsy
- The mural
- Painted 1990 by Dmitry Vrubel. Repainted 2009 by Vrubel and Viktoria Timofeeva. East Side Gallery, Berlin.
Click any picture for the print file. Free to use when you are writing about BRUDERKUSS or about my family. Credit: BRUDERKUSS. Crop them as you like; please do not distort them or use them in advertising. Anything else, ask me.