21.11.2025 –
08.03.2026
Emilio Vedova – More than Movement for Its Own Sake
With the exhibition Emilio Vedova – More than Movement for Its Own Sake, Kunsthaus Dahlem dedicates a show to the Venetian artist that focuses on his Berlin years from 1963 to 1965. This period marks an important phase in Vedova’s career, during which he embarked on new artistic paths.
Curator: Dorothea Schöne, Managing Director, Kunsthaus Dahlem
Opening: 20 November 2025 at 19:00
Emilio Vedova in Berlin
Invited by art historian Werner Haftmann as part of an artist programme run by the American Ford Foundation, Emilio Vedova (1919–2006) came to Berlin in November 1963 – a city that, more than almost any other, embodied contradictions: traumatised by the Nazi past, divided by the Cold War, and yet brimming with cultural energy. This “island city”, as Vedova called it, became the stage for a highly productive artistic and socio-political reckoning.
Vedova moved into the former state studio of Arno Breker in Dahlem, a site steeped in the history of National Socialist propaganda art, to which his works now stood in diametrical opposition. In the building’s vast central hall, he created a multitude of works characterised by great experimental spirit. Particularly notable are the Plurimi – movable picture panels with which Vedova opened painting into space. With them, he broke away from the rigid geometric abstraction that had shaped his work since the 1940s. The Plurimi, with their dynamism, mutability, and expressiveness, are grounded not only in a “theory of movement”, through which Vedova tested a spatial conception of painting, but also in an intense engagement with the political and social tensions he encountered in Berlin.
A key work of this period is the Absurdes Berliner Tagebuch (Absurd Berlin Diary), which Vedova presented at documenta III in 1964. This monumental piece can be understood as a painterly record of his experiences in Berlin and was donated to the Berlinische Galerie in 2002.
About the Exhibition
Rather than revisiting this frequently exhibited work, the show at Kunsthaus Dahlem concentrates on the lesser-seen works from Vedova’s Berlin years. Among them are several Plurimi created on site – both in the form of models and fully realised works. With these, the artist broke through the boundaries of painting and carried it into three-dimensionality. Yet the works are not only a formal exploration of the picture plane, but also an engagement with the history and present of the city. Vedova was deeply concerned with tracing the legacy of artists who had once contributed to Berlin’s cultural flowering – the Expressionists as well as the Dadaists. Collages and prints, often titled Hommage à Dada, bear witness to his engagement with this pre-war avant-garde movement. At the same time, he took a political stance, addressing both the traces of the Nazi past and the escalating East–West conflict – not through figurative references, but through the absence of a fixed pictorial structure and an expressive application of colour. For Vedova, the Berlin Plurimi reveal “the simultaneity of the present, events that have happened, that continue to happen, and that must shake everyone to the core”.
The exhibition unfolds chronologically and thematically through Vedova’s Berlin years and invites visitors to rediscover his work. Its title, More than Movement for Its Own Sake, echoes a dictum of the artist:
“My work is anything but a game, movement for its own sake – quite the opposite …”.
In doing so, the exhibition points to Vedova’s central concern: to understand movement not as an end in itself, but as an expression of social, political, and human experience. For today’s audience, Vedova’s art remains strikingly relevant – as a passionate plea for freedom, critical thinking, and artistic independence.
SUPPORT
Irina and Helmut Laaff
Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova
Сircle of friends Freundeskreis Kunsthaus Dahlem – Bernhard Heiliger e. V.
