Armando The Netherlands — 1929

Armando (born Herman Dirk van Dodeweerd) was a self-taught painter and conceptual artist and considered one of the Netherlands’ most gifted artists. Having grown in the Netherlands during the German occupation and lived close to a Nazi camp, Armando was deeply disturbed by the cruelty of the Nazi regime. This experience has had a big impact on his work. After World War II he took part in the CoBrA movement. And in 1960 he and Jan Schoonhoven, Jan Henderikse, herman de vries and Henk Peters started the Nul-movement. A movement in which the artists propagated"anti-painterly idea". De Nul art was cool and businesslike. The emerging consumer-society was a major source of inspiration for these artists. In this period Armando makes many wall-reliefs and installations. Filling walls with beer-crates or car tires. Armando often used bolts, which he applied to canvasses. In the time that Armando was in the Nul group, he drew less. The drawings he made seemed almost mechanically and without the visible hand of the artist. In the late sixties, the drawings become gradually more personal. It is not until the mid-seventies that Armando starts painting again.His work is about "humans, and what they are capable of, and of it’s tragedy”, as Armando said himself.