Artwork details

The mural shows a biker sitting in the rubble of a broken wall. Above him, a road leads into a Berlin sunset. The triangular artwork opens the façade like a window – trees, clouds, and a cityscape reaching toward the sun. Created in 1984 together with motorcycle-riding squatters and the International Building Exhibition (IBA), it was a compromise between the residents’ wish for a pin-up girl and the neighbors’ concerns. Instead of eroticism, Easy Rider shows a biker who has crashed his motorcycle into a wall – a quiet reflection on the many walls of West Berlin, both in courtyards and at its borders. Today the lower part is heavily tagged, but the sky and treetops still shine above. Werner Brunner is part of the first generation of Berlin muralists and a former member of the politically engaged artist group Ratgeb (1977–1985). Since the mid-1970s he has used wall paintings and public interventions in Berlin and France to accompany urban protest movements and debates about the city.