Hidden, shifted,
Thick, thin, uneven
To another past called memory.

Armand (Herman Dirk van Dodeweerd) is a multitalented artist who was a painter, sculptor, poet, draftsman, graphic artist, conceptual artist, writer, violinist for the Royal Gypsy Orchestra Tata Mirando, founder and first violinist of his own string quartet, boxer, and creator of the TV show "Helenried (cross-dressing)". He has won most of the Dutch literary prizes and received the VSB Poetry Prize in 2011. He has also been awarded many titles, and his importance in Dutch culture is immeasurable. He continued to work energetically in his studio in Potsdam until just before his death at the age of 89.

Armand grew up in Amersfoort (Netherlands), close to a former concentration camp for Jews. The brutal war experiences he witnessed there left an indelible memory that had a profound impact on his work. Here we can see the original landscapes of memory that often become the motifs of his works.

As a young man, Armand joined the non-narrative, non-emotional art movement Group Zero. When this movement came to an end in the mid-1960s, he devoted himself to journalism and poetry, and began painting again in 1972. In 1979 he moved to Berlin, where he began to paint simple shapes such as flags, wheels, three-way intersections and ladders in heavy, impasto-painted paintings. These were the series of large monochrome canvases that would become known worldwide. From 1988 onwards, he further developed the forms he painted into works of art.Made into a three-dimensionalLarge bronze sculpturehas announced the following.

This book is a collection of 21 pieces selected from the "Notes to the Past" series, which Armand created in the 1980s at the peak of his maturity at age 50, and reproduced using xerography. The source material for these works is old paper portraits of people he doesn't even know, which Armand found at flea markets.PortraitUnder the photo, it says,Are you trying to touch a memory?The painting is accompanied by sharp, understated lines, such as:

This book, which contains a comprehensive collection of 21 works, including those already in the museum's collection, is quite large, but it is still smaller than the original size of the original works and printed on Kent paper instead of cardboard. It was made by bookbinder Tatsuko Ohira and published by Tokyo Publishing House in a limited edition of 30 copies. Six of the 30 copies are special editions with rounded spines.

There is the past, the present, and the future.
If you count them, there are three. But there is one more, a fourth.
From memory, or perhaps from imagination,
That is the past. A completely different past.

——— Armando (excerpt from the book)