Page 42 - Studio International - December 1970

through members like Karel Appel, Constant
and Corneille was at that time exerting a
great deal of influence on the younger genera-
tion of Dutch artists. In Armando's works
there were very definite traces of this influence ;
sometimes the same human and animal
figures in a non-perspective space as in Appel's
paintings; one is also reminded of Cobra in
that Armando would allow a line or blotch to
give rise to figuration. But at the same time
there was an independent quality in his
work—his regard for the painting or drawing
in its entirety. In his drawings this was evident
in his weighing up of the black lines of pencil
or pen against the white of the paper. They
relied for their effect on their situation on the
plane, on the quantity and quality of the
drawn elements: confident or hesitant, heavy
or very light. Not that every inch of every line
was thought out before being committed to
paper; accident was largely to determine the
final result. Armando used a clumsy carpen-
ter's pencil and drew with his eyes shut or
with his left hand or with two pencils simul-
taneously; the pencil scratched, got stuck or
flew off; sometimes it turned on its point so
that not only lines but also white ridges were
made in the paper when the point was worn
down. Armando wanted the drawing to be
more or less spontaneous, unpredictable, and
free of virtuosity. Those who, like me, first
saw these old drawings in 1969, a good ten to
eighteen years after their completion, have
the greatest difficulty in imagining the revul-
sion then to Armando's drawings and peintures
criminelles. Today one is aware of his most
impressive feeling for and mastery over draw-
ing. It is drawing at its most intense. His forms
are fragmentary and open, there is no
difference between contours and inside lines
The dots and lines of his drawings are placed
so strategically that they seem to activate and
to invest with meaning those parts of the paper
that have been left empty. What has been

3&4
Carel Visser
Two Drawings 1970
Pencil on paper
50 x 65 cm.
Coll: C. Kuijlman, Maasland
5
Gilbert and George
Sculpture for Art and Project bulletin 20 1970
Pen and ink on paper
Coll: Mr and Mrs van Ellen, Amsterdam
6
Ad Dekkers
Saw-cut III 1970
Wood
120x 120 cm.
Coll: Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven