Armando Archive comes to the RKD

The Armando Foundation and the RKD - Netherlands Institute for Art History are delighted that a substantial part of the archive of Armando (1929-2018) will be housed at the RKD. The 2.5 meters of archival material includes scrapbooks, notes, sketches, photographs and correspondence.
Armando, who died in 2018 at the age of 88, was a versatile artist and a true multi talent. As heir to Armando’s entire artistic oeuvre, the Armando Foundation is not only responsible for his paintings and sculptures, but also for his literature, tv-programmes and music. This richly varied oeuvre can be regarded as a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, rooted in his experiences living close to Kamp Amersfoort during World War II. The legacy of Armando also comprises an extensive library, photographic documentation and his personal archive with scrapbooks, diaries, manuscripts, notebooks and sketches.
The many notebooks with preliminary sketches for paintings, sculptures and drawings offer more insight into the extensive oeuvre, as do the scrapbooks with correspondence, newspaper articles, snapshots and other documentation Armando himself compiled. The archive also includes ring binders filled with portrait photographs showing Armando through the years, pamphlets, notes of meetings and opening speeches for exhibitions. Through these the archive presents an overview starting with Armando’s Zero-period in the sixties until his final years.
Remarkable are the pictures Armando himself took of his surroundings or of objects he sometimes literally used for his paintings. The archive also contains a number of artworks made especially for Armando by befriended artists, such as Klaas Gubbels. At the beginning of July 2021, the archive was moved to the RKD in The Hague, where it will be recorded and further examined.