MirtaDomacinovic

ZeicheninderReihe

1990
2009

“The feeling of painting on the East German side of the Wall was weird. […] When you know all the history, it’s a strange feeling.”

Interview 2021

Mirta Domacinovic was born in Vinkovci, Yugoslavia (Croatia) in 1961. She emigrated with her family to West Germany in 1981. A freelance artist, she lives in Frankfurt am Main and Austria. Her painting “Zeichen in der Reihe” shows symbols of war, torture, rape, and dictatorship.

Mirta Domacinovic in the interview

On her painting

Who is Mirta Domacinovic?

How did you get involved in the East Side Gallery?

How it felt to paint on the Wall

What do you think about the new buildings around the East Side Gallery?

What is art?

The fall of the Wall and new freedoms

"The East Side Gallery is…"

Domacinovic’s “Zeichen in der Reihe” (Signs in a row) shows a set of abstract pictograms symbolising war, torture, rape, and dictatorship, such as barbed wire, a prison cell, a wreath, and a foetus. The painting expresses Domacinovic’s concerns about the volatile situation and increasingly nationalist tendencies in Yugoslavia at the time. Several Wall sections with her painting on them were removed after 1990 to provide access to the building land behind. In 2022 they were remounted not far from their original site.

Several Wall sections were removed from the painting “Zeichen in der Reihe” to make room for an access road, 1997
Several Wall sections were removed from the painting “Zeichen in der Reihe” to make room for an access road, 1997

Domacinovic enrolled to study art at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach in 1982 and studied painting for a time at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart. She looks back on the experience of painting on the once strictly guarded, untouchable Berlin Wall as special and strange.

Mirta Domacinovic in front of her painting on the Berlin Wall, 1990
Mirta Domacinovic in front of her painting on the Berlin Wall, 1990
all artworks