Dmitri Vrubel, the Russian painter, died on August 14. He was 62 years old. Born in Moscow on July 14, 1960, Vrubel’s surname is a Russification of the Polish surname, Wroble. 

He is best known for the graffiti My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love, on the Berlin Wall, which depicts Communist leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker kissing. The painting is also known as Kiss of Death or Brother Kiss. 

Vrubel’s work was inspired by the picture taken by the photographer Regis Bossu, where he captured the socialist fraternal kiss between Brezhnev of the Soviet Union and Honecker of the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, in 1979. The occasion was to celebrate 30 years of the GDR. The painting was removed in 2009 by authorities as part of the cleaning efforts, to have it repainted by Vrubel. 

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The news of the artist’s death was confirmed by Milena Orlova, editor-in-chief of the Art Newspaper Russia, as per TASS. The Russian state-controlled media channel reported Orlova saying, “Oh, how I don’t feel like being a messenger of deaths. Dima Vrubel has died. My condolences to his loved ones and friends”. 

While no official cause of death is clear, the artist is believed to have succumbed to COVID-related complications. His wife, Viktoria Timofeyeva, had said in a July 17 post that Vrubel’s heart had become “very weak”, but noted that he’d recovered from his COVID infection. 

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The artist studied at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute, and in recent years lived in Germany. 

In 2001, Vrubel and his wife created a calendar titled The 12 moods of Putin. The large format calendar included portraits of the Russian president Vladimir Putin, and each page had a different image of the nation’s leader. It became an unexpected hit with the Russian people.