"Please don't graffiti our paintings. I get really very sad when I see that people have scribbled silly stuff on top of art that we've worked on many times throughout the years. It's disrespectful."
Karina Bjerregaard was born in Nyborg (Denmark) in 1962. She works with painting, performing arts, and graphic design and lives in Copenhagen. Her Wall painting “Himlen over Berlin” (“The sky above Berlin”) portrays the euphoria surrounding the fall of the Wall. She painted it in cooperation with Lotte Haubart, a graphic designer who also lives in Copenhagen.
Karina Bjerregaard in the interview
The painting “Himlen over Berlin” is inspired by a song by Nina Hagen and the film “Wings of Desire” (German: “Himmel über Berlin”) by Wim Wenders. Lotte Haubart painted the flying dogs; Karina Bjerregaard the Brandenburg Gate. The descending angel stands for Wenders, a West German filmmaker; the ascending angel for Hagen, a singer from East Germany. The painting depicts the sense of excitement and happiness at being able to pass freely through the Brandenburg Gate again. In 2013 “Himlen over Berlin” was cut apart and moved into the park to make way for the new Living Levels apartment building.
Bjerregaard’s work has been shown in numerous exhibitions in Denmark and abroad. She read the call for applications to the East Side Gallery in a Danish newspaper and left for Berlin with fellow artist Lotte Haubart two days later. They painted “Himlen over Berlin” on the Wall together.