The Italian painter Emilio Vedova (1919–2006) created his installation “Absurd Berlin Diary ’64” in 1964 while on a grant from the US-based Ford Foundation. This funding enabled the artist to spend a year living and working in West Berlin. He produced the spatial object in the studio formerly used by Nazi sculptor Arno Breker, which now houses Kunsthaus Dahlem. It went on show later that year at documenta III in Kassel.
The two asymmetrical panels were sawn from wood, painted on both sides and joined by iron hinges to form moveable structures. Vedova called his free-standing, walk-around, pictorial elements “plurimi”. With their multiple aspects, Vedova’s plurimi liberated painting from its conventional confinement to a flat base. His Berlin plurimi were a reaction to the divided city, which Vedova experienced as a “clash of contradictions”.
The installation, eight metres tall and one of Vedova’s major works, is unique in his oeuvre for its complexity and monumentality. In 2002 the artist donated the work to the Berlinische Galerie for its new home on Alte Jakobstrasse.