French artist Thierry Noirโs paintings pop with the colourful cartoonish characters that have come to define him.
The characters โ featuring big heads, elongated faces, bulging lips โ exude a sense of fun, which is ironic considering the inspiration for the imagery was born almost half a century ago in Berlin at a time when the divided city was at the heart of the Cold War.
โPainting the colourful long faces and big heads was a sort of physical reaction against the pressure of daily life near the Berlin Wall,โ says Noir, who between 1984 and 1989 covered about 5km of the wall with his art.
At the time, he had no idea of the mark he would leave, not just on the wall but on the global contemporary art scene. Today, he is considered a pioneer of the street art movement.
โWe called street art graffiti back then,โ he says.