Quarter-life Creative | By Karen Buckley.: Berlin

"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.

The Gallery consists of 105 paintings by artists from all over the world, painted in 1990 on the east side of the Berlin Wall. The East Side Gallery was founded following the successful merger of the two German artists' associations VBK and BBK. The founding members were the speche of the Federal Association of Artists BBK Bodo Sperling, Barbara Greul Aschanta, Jörg Kubitzki and David Monti.[1][2]

It is possibly the largest and longest-lasting open air gallery in the world. Paintings from Jürgen Grosse alias INDIANO, Dimitri Vrubel, Siegfrid Santoni, Bodo Sperling, Kasra Alavi, Kani Alavi, Jim Avignon, Thierry Noir, Ingeborg Blumenthal, Ignasi Blanch i Gisbert, Kim Prisu, Hervé Morlay VR and others have followed."

To continue from my previous post Take Three Berlin | The Eisfabrik, we ventured over Schillingbrücke Bridge to check out the East Side Gallery which is located along Mühlenstraße. As described in our handbook we were very much looking forward to walking in the sand behind the wall and grabbing a refreshment from one of the beach huts and also checking out the happenings of Yaam. But, I guess it must all also be pretty seasonal and if your heading there in the colder months, don't expect much.

But the art on the wall was really interesting and it is definitely worth having a look on the beach side of the wall for a lot more art and graffiti (and in my mind slightly rougher and much more interesting) on Wikipedia they have also referred to some of the 'art' on the main side facing the road to have been "badly damaged by erosion, graffiti, and vandalism", and the East Side Gallery website states, "The Artist Initiative East Side Gallery e.V. for several years has been making an effort to preserve the East Side Gallery. The colorful images created in 1989/90 are today hardly recognizable. The paintings and the wall are in an extremely deteriorated condition through weather, air pollution, vandalistic collectors, and simply time. Yet there still is hope for the now gray East Side Gallery."

First are the pictures taken of the side of the wall at the road and second are the pictures from the side facing the river,,,,