Jolly Kunjappu Turns a Berlin Wall Moment Into a Practice Built on Peace
Jolly Kunjappu, the India-born, Germany-based artist, traces his career to a single question asked in Munich in April 1990: why not paint? That exchange, during a performance workshop for a physically handicapped artist group, pushed him to begin painting the same day. Later that year, he was invited to paint on a section of the fallen Berlin Wall, and his work “Dancing to Freedom” became part of the Eastside Gallery Berlin memorial.
That origin story still shapes the way Kunjappu describes his practice. He says he works intuitively, guided by momentary feeling rather than sketches or fixed plans. His paintings, he says, emerge from emotion and experience, with peace, love, and freedom recurring as central themes. The only works he says he has preplanned for 2026 are “FREEDOM,” “PEACE,” and “LOVE.”
Recent attention has widened the reach of that vocabulary. Kunjappu said an art journalist from eXperimenta magazine reviewed his archive of art and writing, leading to an interview for the publication’s December 2025 issue. After seeing “LOVE” and “PEACE” in March, the magazine asked to place “PEACE” on the cover of its May 2026 issue. He also noted that he is producing a documentary film titled “Peace On Earth,” which he says is intended to encourage people to act toward both personal and world peace.
The artist’s recent work includes “Simply Pleasure” (2012–13) and newer paintings such as “COLORS IN LOVE” (2026), alongside the three planned 2026 works. He is also set to take part in a group exhibition in Bingen, Germany, on June 20, 2026.
For Kunjappu, the through line is clear: art as an intuitive response to lived experience, and as a vehicle for a message he wants to carry beyond the studio. In a moment when many artists are revisiting the relationship between image, belief, and public life, his work places that question squarely in the language of peace.
