Armando [antikvár]

MOMENT AND HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS GÜNTHER GERCKEN Armando's writings - and nothing seemed more natural - have been used to interpret the contents of his paintings. Although he himself has declared that his thematic starting point plays an important role in his paintings and drawings, the description of their content cannot do justice to these works because what matters most in them is the transformation of content into art. Armando started out in the visual arts with a non-representational, unconventional method of painting and drawing, partly inspired by Cobra. Later, however, in keeping with the principles of the Dutch Nul movement (a current related to the German Zero movement), he increasingly moved towards a differentiated monochrome approach. In his drawings and paintings, he deliberately eschewed compositional order. 'I absolutely refused to engage in composition' (Armando).^ All that mattered was the directness of the material - which had to be searched out and remained a prerequisite of his work - and the activation of the surface. In the early drawings - executed with just a few angular and broken strokes, Armando was able to place the white surface under such tension as to create a three-dimensional effect. It would be wrong to consider these drawings expressive gestures; they represent something, for instance, a scenic feature. From these beginnings, Armando developed a technique of impasto, relief-like painting using black oil with added sand to increase the sensuality of the surface, a technique that is neither figurative nor action painting. The picture seems to emerge out of the interaction of the black and white streams of colour controlled by the artist with a careful strategy. The black oil paint spreads over the white ground and advances in certain directions. The movement is halting; accelerations alternate with decelerations. Forms emerge, now gropingly, now confidently. Resistances of white colour delay the advance of the black. Black and white fight for predominance. In this process, the two colours may be sharply demarcated, interlock in jagged transitions, or interpenetrate in infinite gradations of gray that simulate blue-gray as an extra colour. As a painter of differentiated tones ranging from black to white, Armando is in the great tradition of Dutch painting. By the application of colour and surface structure, by the use of directional forces and by the tension of his forms, Armando manipulates the painting surface in such a way as to compel it to absorb his own sensitivity and transmit it to the observer. His psyche with all its impulses, moods and reflections seems to have been turned inside out on canvas. Fear, hatred, indignation and sorrow are converted into the