Watercolour ink drawings from Florastraße and Pankow by Christian Badel
Christian Badel
Portraits of houses from Florastraße and Pankow – drawings
Opening: Friday, 7 November 2025 at 7 p.m.
Exhibition: 7.11.2025 – 8.2.2026
Christian Badel works and lives as a draughtsman and illustrator on Florastraße in Berlin/Pankow. His one-man agency, Büro KIKIFAX, has been working with various publishers and clients for many years.
He was born in 1966 in the East German city of Gotha, Thuringia, the first of six children. As the child of academics and a member of various political groups, he was banned from studying in the GDR, trained as a skilled worker in wood technology (FA für HT) and worked as a shift worker in furniture factories, as a film projectionist and as an unskilled worker in church nursing homes. In 1988, he was sent to the Leuna chemical combine and the lignite mining industry for forced labour because he refused to bear arms.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he studied design and fine arts at the Berlin Weissensee School of Art, the Berlin University of the Arts (now UdK) and the Repin Institute in St. Petersburg. He is a master student of the Japanese artist Leiko Ikemura.
Today, he works as a draughtsman, illustrator, project developer, art educator and performer. His drawings can be found in books, posters, magazines, on CD covers and in museums, for example.
People enjoy watching him at events and conferences. It is impressive to see how a work of art is created in a matter of minutes, capturing the moment and allowing it to be taken home. He regularly draws at Boheme Sauvage and the Berlin Burlesque Festival, among other places. As an urban sketcher, he has been documenting the city, especially the district of Pankow and its inhabitants, for over 20 years.
He draws sketches and graphics of situations and places in Berlin as well as portraits of houses, and also deals with the recent and older history of the buildings. The result is a combination of texts and images that document the events and layers of time in the city.
He is a founding member of the artist group KEP (KunstEtagenPankow) and shows his work in various solo and group exhibitions.
Little by little, I am drawing the houses on Florastraße:
