Eduardo Kobra's Tribute: 'Let Me Be Myself' Anne Frank Mural
Artist: Eduardo Kobra
Title: Let Me Be Myself
Year: 2016
Location: NDSM Wharf, Amsterdam
Surface: Steel door of the former Lasloods welding warehouse
Size: 240 square meters
Materials: More than 450 spray cans and 35 liters of lacquer paint
Subject: Anne Frank
"Let me be Myself" by Eduardo Kobra | Artist: Eduardo Kobra | photo by Nadia Bouzid
Anne Frank’s face covers the steel entrance of an old welding warehouse at Amsterdam’s NDSM Wharf. At 240 square meters, it is less a portrait than part of the building.
Brazilian artist Eduardo Kobra painted Let Me Be Myself in 2016 using more than 450 spray cans and 35 liters of lacquer paint. Her face is immediately recognizable, even after he breaks it into his usual blocks of red, yellow, blue, green and purple.
Kobra had wanted to paint Anne for years. Amsterdam gave him the place to do it. Her family came here after leaving Germany, she went to school here and she later spent more than two years hidden inside the rooms behind her father’s business.
The title comes from Anne herself: “Let me be myself and then I am satisfied.”
It is a direct sentence, but not a light one. Anne Frank has become large enough to stand for innocence, hope, courage, tolerance and almost anything else people need from her. Somewhere in all that symbolism, the actual girl can disappear.
Her diary does not allow that so easily. Anne is intelligent and ambitious, but also impatient, funny, critical and very aware of how other people see her. She writes about fear and persecution, then turns to arguments with her mother, her changing body, boys, religion and her plans to become a writer. She is not trying to sound like a historical figure. She is trying to understand herself.
Kobra uses the photograph almost everyone knows, then fractures it. Parts remain in black and white. Others move through sharp fields of color, with the geometry passing over her eyes, hair and clothing.
From a distance, the image is complete. Closer to the door, the familiar face starts to separate into color, line and pieces of the original photograph. Kobra does not give us another polite memorial portrait.
NDSM is an old shipbuilding complex on the northern bank of the IJ, reached from central Amsterdam by ferry. The cranes, warehouses and enormous industrial spaces remain, but studios, offices, events and art have moved in around them. It still feels rough enough to handle a mural of this size.
The portrait covers the entrance of the Lasloods, a former welding warehouse. Steel, brick and the proportions of the shipyard surround it. Nothing about the building tries to make the work delicate.
Anne spent the final years of her life being forced into smaller and smaller spaces. First her rights disappeared, then her freedom, and eventually she had to disappear from public life altogether. At NDSM, her face occupies one of the largest doors in Amsterdam.
The scale is beautiful, but it is also slightly uncomfortable. Anne Frank has been reproduced so often that her face can become detached from what happened to her. Kobra’s color attracts the eye. The title brings the weight back.
“Let me be myself” is usually read as a statement about individuality. Anne wrote it while living under a government that had decided her Jewish identity was enough to strip away every other part of who she was. On this wall, the sentence is not asking for approval. It is asking to be seen accurately.
Kobra is known for painting enormous portraits of people connected to peace, justice and human rights. His work is direct and made to be understood from the street. With Anne Frank, recognition is the easy part.
The harder part is seeing the person inside the icon.