The installation “Absurd Berlin Diary ’64” by Italian painter Emilio Vedova (1919–2006) is one of his most significant works and is unique within his œuvre for its complexity and monumentality.
The work consists of asymmetrical panels sawn from wood, painted on both sides and joined by iron hinges to form movable structures. Vedova called his free-standing, walk-around, pictorial elements “plurimi”. Vedova’s plurimi liberated painting from its conventional confinement to a flat base.
Emilio Vedova (1919–2006) created the work 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. His Berlin plurimi were a reaction to the divided city, which Vedova experienced as a “clash of contradictions”. He produced the spatial object in the studio formerly used by Nazi sculptor Arno Breker, which now houses Kunsthaus Dahlem. Later that year it went on show at documenta III in Kassel. In 2002, the artist donated the work to the Berlinische Galerie for its new home on Alte Jakobstrasse.
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Emilio Vedova, Absurd Berlin Diary ’64, 1964, Berlinische Galerie, © Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova, Photo: Lutz Bertram (JPG, 706 KB)
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