(Venice 1919–2006)
Plurimo No. 6 nego, 1962–63, oil, vinyl paint, charcoal, pastel, iron and iron hinges on polyfront wooden elements , 213 x 80 x 50 cm

This work is registered in the archives of the Fondazione Emilio Vedova, Venice. We are grateful to the Fondazione Emilio Vedova, Venice for their support in cataloguing this work.

Provenance:
Hess Art Collection, Switzerland

Exhibited:
Rome, Vedova, Galleria Marlborough, December 1963 – January 1964, unpaged with ill.
Munich, Vedova-Plurimi, Galerie Günther Franke and Galerie Franke at the Arco-Palais, September-October 1964.
Baden-Baden, Emilio Vedova, Staatliche Kunsthalle, 19. December 1964 – 17. January 1965
Venice, Emilio Vedova 1935-1984, Museo Correr, 2. May – 30. December 1984, no. 147 p. 171 with ill. and p. 172 with col.-ill.
Rivioli, Emilio Vedova, Castello di Rivoli - Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, 17. October 1988 – 17. January 1999, p. 67 with col.-ill.

Literature:
Emilio Vedova, exh. cat., Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen Staatsgalerie moderner Kunst, Munich 1986, p. 108 with ill.
D. Ronte, Hess Collection, New York, 198, p. 214, no. 152 with full page ill. p. 216-217.
Emilio Vedova, exh. cat., Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea, Trento 1996, p. 47 with ill.
Hess Art Collection, Ostfildern 2009, p. 348-349 with ill.
G. Celant (ed.), Emilio Vedova Scultore, Skira, Milan, 2010, no. 59 with full page ill.
G. Celant (ed.), Vedova De America, Skira, Milan, 2019, p. 316, no. 98 with full page ill.

Emilio Vedova spent the years 1963 to 1965 in Berlin as a scholar of the New York Ford Foundation. As a gestural, spontaneous, informal painter, he was already considered part of the artistic avant-garde of the post-war period.

In the atmosphere of life in a divided, torn city in transition, along with his own impetus to transfer his painterly gesture into a new space, he created his Plurimi—three-dimensional, movable wooden sculptures made from gesturally painted, colorful, raw, sawn wooden boards that are connected by hinges and can be freely arranged in space. He exhibited his Plurimi at the Documenta in 1964, which offered him “the possibility of mobility on various gestural levels” (Vedova).

He donated the expansive work Absurd Berlin Diary 1964 to the Berlinische Galerie, where it has been showcased as a central installation since 2008.