Since the end of World War II, Emilio Vedova (who was twenty-six in 1945) has gained recognition, both at home and abroad, as one of the most original and provocative Italian artists. By going beyond realism and figuration and embracing modernist abstraction, he helped free Italian art from the aesthetic burdens of Fascism. In 1964, we find him in Berlin, eager to rekindle the spirit that once animated George Grosz, Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, and the Dadaists. “Plurimi,” a series of works executed between 1961 and 1965, comprises large-scale multifaceted wood surfaces interposed almost as if at