Kani Alavi was born in 1955 in Lahidjan, northern Persia. In 1979 he graduated from high school with a degree in natural sciences and moved to Berlin in 1980, where he began studying free painting with Prof. Klaus Fußmann at the HDK Berlin, with whom he became a master's student. In 1986 he studied visual communication with Prof. Türmer (also at the HDK), and in 1990 painted segments of the Berlin Wall on the East Side Gallery with other artists. In 1996, Alavi became the initiator of East Side Gallery's artist initiative.
In 2001, the wall segments painted by Kani Alavi were handed over to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan by the President of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Thierse. The wall segments were installed in the UN Sculpture Garden in New York in 2002.
