The painter and concept artist Bodo Sperling was born in Hanau (West Germany) in 1952 and grew up in Leipzig, Amsterdam, Frankfurt am Main and West Berlin. He studied electrical engineering and modern art. He called his painting showing an altered EU flag “Transformation des Pentagram zum Friedensstern in einem großen Europa ohne Mauern” (The pentagram’s transformation into a star of peace in a greater Europe without walls). He lives in Berlin and Heppenheim.
Bodo Sperling’s painting “Die Transformation des Pentagram zum Friedensstern in einem großen Europa ohne Mauern” (The pentagram’s transformation into a star of peace in a greater Europe without walls) cites the flag of the European Union. However, the ring of stars is shown here with hexagrams (six-pointed stars), standing for amoeba and life, rather than pentagrams (five-pointed stars), which also appear on military equipment and which the artist regards as symbols of violence. With his Wall painting of 1990, also depicting the Berlin Wall, Sperling called for the inclusion of the remaining countries of Europe in the European Union and the opening of borders within the EU.
Bodo Sperling was born in Hanau (West Germany) in 1952 and grew up in East Germany, West Germany and The Netherlands. A concept artist, he qualified as an electrical engineer before starting to produce computer generated art. In 1988/89 he studied Modern Art at the University of Tübingen. He was spokesman for the Federal German association of visual artists and negotiated the society’s merger with the East German artists’ association VBK in 1990. He considers himself a co-founder of the East Side Gallery. In 2009 he was a member of the co-founders’ Gründerinitiative East Side Gallery group and opposed the restoration of his Wall painting, which now no longer exists.
