Thierry Noir was born in Lyon (France) in 1958. In 1982 he moved to West Berlin, close to the Berlin Wall. From 1984 onwards he painted daily on the west side of the Wall, changing its aspect with his characteristic colourful heads. He titled his fresco in the East Side Gallery “Hommage an die junge Generation” (“Tribute to the young generation”). Noir is one of the world’s best-known street artists.
French artist Thierry Noir’s work “Hommage an die junge Generation” (“Tribute to the young generation”) is one of the longest works in the East Side Gallery. It shows a motif of colourful heads which Noir had already worked with as an artist in West Berlin, painting on the Wall in Kreuzberg. He painted another – abstract – work adjacent to this painting. For a time, he covered the entire area in heads but in 2009 restored the original version of the second painting. It was important to him to preserve the Wall as a piece of history and so appeal to young people to maintain democracy and peace.
Noir moved into the Georg-von-Rauch house, a youth centre close to the Wall in Kreuzberg, in 1982. From 1984 onwards he painted daily on the west side of the Wall as a sign of resistance and to make it “go away”. His striking colourful heads became world famous. Wall sections that he painted can now be seen in London, New York, Monaco, and Los Angeles as well as in Berlin. Noir lives in Berlin where he continues to paint colourful heads.