Lennon Wall getting a makeover, and an inflatable copy will tour Europe

Prague’s Lennon Wall will get a new look, and an inflatable copy will tour Europe. The wall will be repainted by 27 artists from the EU and special guests from Ukraine and Norway on Sept. 7 as part of the international cultural project "Wall of Freedom and Energy / Lennon Wall Prague."

The joint painting on the 35-meter-wide wall will be created in one day between 9 a.m. and at 6:30 p.m. The project is part of the Czech presidency of the EU, and is meant to highlight the EU motto "United in Diversity."

The author and curator of the project is artist Pavel Šťastný, and the co-organizer of the project is cultural producer Robin Suchánek. Šťastný, among other things, was the creator of the Civic Forum logo just after the Velvet Revolution.

He has already overseen new designs for the Lennon Wall twice. The first time was by dozens of artists from the Czech Republic and abroad in mid-March 2019 on the occasion of the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the communist regime.

The second time was in the autumn of 2019 after structural renovations of the wall, ordered by the Knights of Malta, took place. The wall is part of the Embassy of the Knights of Malta, a Catholic religious order with a special status. It is located at Velkopřevorské náměstí in Malá Strana.

Plaster was removed and the cornice and the historic portal were repaired. On Nov. 7, 2019, the wall was ceremoniously unveiled in its new form, with a design by Šťastný together with more than 30 artists.

"I appreciate not only the trust of the Order of the Knights of Malta, which owns the Lennon Wall, and our long-term cooperation, but also the fact that the project was included in the government’s cultural projects for the Czech EU presidency,” Šťastný said.

"In this first phase of the project, the most challenging thing is to select, approach, and agree on the details with the individual artists. Everyone has to fly to the Czech Republic already on Tuesday so that they can work on their parts from Wednesday morning. On Wednesday evening, the unveiling of the work and the vernissage will take place with the participation of all the authors and also some ambassadors of the countries where the artists come from," Šťastný said.

Andrea Žaba Klváčková from Slovakia, Jan Wessel from Denmark, Denis Klatt from Germany, Sara Pace from Malta, Anaëlle Bouard from France, Vanessa Power from Ireland, Boris Bare from Croatia, Maria Wolfram from Finland will participate in the new form of the wall, among others. and many others.

The Czech Republic will be represented on the Lennon Wall by Charlien, a.k.a. Lenka Brázdilová, who recently also participated in a Czech exhibition on the fence of the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Paris near the Eiffel Tower.

After the new design is finished, the wall will be professionally photographed. The organizers will then send the photos to a Czech company that specializes in the production of hot air balloons and various inflatable objects so they can produce an inflatable Lennon Wall in the same dimensions as the original.

Šťastný and Suchánek plan to take this portable version of the wall to Strasbourg, Paris, Brussels, and Luxembourg in October to represent the culture of the Czech Republic and the EU.

The project "Wall of Freedom and Energy / Lennon Wall Prague" was created in cooperation with Jan Horník, deputy chairman of the Czech Senate, and Michel Fleischmann, ambassador of the Czech Republic in Paris.

The project is implemented under the auspices of and in cooperation with the Office of the Government, the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, the Prague 1 district, the Czech Chamber of Commerce, the Franco-Czech Chamber of Commerce, and Czech Tourism. It is also supported by French international firm Veolia, the hotel The Mozart Prague, its sister company My Hotel Match, and Dulux Paints.

In the past, people from the public were allowed to paint on the wall. Due to a growing number of inebriated tourists on pub crawls who vandalized the wall, the Knights of Malta, the Prague 1 district, and the City of Prague agreed in 2019 to make the wall an open-air gallery for professional artists. The wall is now monitored by cameras. Busking for money at the wall is also banned, and noise limits have been set.

"We don’t want the place to become a cheap tourist attraction, where everyone could scribble nonsensical and dirty things. This was not a dignified state," Johannes Lobkowicz, Chancellor of the Knights of Malta, said at the time.

The wall had been a site for graffiti critical of the communist regime since the 1970s. Since the murder of former Beatles member John Lennon in 1980 it has become a place for Beatle song lyrics, portraits of Lennon, and messages and images relating to world peace.