Biography Nul=0
Armando (Amsterdam, 1929)
Armando is born in 1929 in Amsterdam. In the late thirties the family moves to Amersfoort, where Armando spends his youth. He lives close to a German concentration camp and what he sees and experiences there leaves a lasting impression and forms a significant source for his visual and literary work.
Between 1949 and 1954 he studies History of Art and Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam and Armando begins as a self-taught painter.
In 1954 he exhibits his Peintures Criminelles for the first time, from which his painting develops into black and red impasto monochrome paintings, his Paysages Criminels.
From 1958 to 1960 he is part of the Dutch Informele Groep, together with Kees van Bohemen, Jan Henderikse, Henk Peeters and Jan Schoonhoven.
In 1960 he is a co-founder of the Dutch Nul group, which will exist until 1965, after which Armando will devote himself solely to his literary work for a number of years.
At the end of the sixties Armando starts to draw and paint again and from 1988 his oeuvre expands to include sculptures.
In addition to his visual artistry, Armando is linked to the weekly magazine, the Haagse Post as art editor from 1958 to the end of the sixties. Thereafter he continues to be published as freelance columnist in various magazines.
In 1998 the Armando Museum is opened in Amersfoort, where an important part of his oeuvre is on display.
Since 1979 Armando alternately lives and works in Berlin and Amsterdam.
Jan Henderikse (Delft, 1937)
Jan Henderikse attends the Vrije Academie in The Hague for his art education. During this period he meets Jan Schoonhoven who introduces him to Armando, Kees van Bohemen and Henk Peeters with whom he sets up the Dutch Informele Groep in 1958. Following on from this he forms, together with these artists – with the exception of Van Bohemen – the Dutch Nul group.
The work of Henderikse is characterised by the use of ready mades and assemblages of litter and useless products from the consumer society, which shows him to be an adherent of Nouveau Réalisme.
In 1959 Henderikse goes to live in Cologne and Düsseldorf and there meets the members of the German Zero movement. From 1963 to 1967 Henderikse lives on Curaçao, after which he leaves for the United States. His photo collages are created here.
Henderikse presently lives and works alternately in Brooklyn (N.Y.) and in Antwerp (B).
Henk Peeters (Den Haag, 1925)
Peeters attends the Koninklijke Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten in The Hague. He initially works in the style of Cobra, but in 1958 he creates his first Monochrome Structures, informal works with which he associates himself with the work of Armando, Henderikse and Schoonhoven, with whom he forms the Informele Groep in 1958. Through contact with Fontana, Manzoni and Klein and with members of the German Zero group he develops an impersonal, objectifying graphic language using materials such as plastic, foam rubber and feathers. Together with Armando, Henderikse and Schoonhoven he sets up the Dutch Nul group, for which he is the most important spokesman, organiser and theoretician.
When the Nul group ceases to exist in 1965, because the ideals of uniting art and life as an artistic phenomenon start to become established in the official art world, and the group on the contrary has apparently outlived its usefulness, Peeters decides to bid farewell to his life as an artist. He accepts a lectureship at the Kunstacademie in Arnhem, restores works from the Nul period and until today remains spokesman for the group.
Jan Schoonhoven (Delft, 1914-1994)
Jan Schoonhoven attends the Koninklijke Academie voor Beeldende Kunst in The Hague from 1930 to 1934, where he studies drawing, after which his career as an artist commences. Initially he feels strongly attracted to the work of the German expressionists Max Pechstein and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and later to Paul Klee. In the forties he begins to draw frequently in ink and watercolour, in which appear more and more rhythmic arrangements in horizontals and verticals. His first reliefs appear in the fifties, at first painted in earth colours, but subsequently more often completely in white.
In 1958 he becomes one of the members of the Dutch Informele Groep, and from 1960 to 1965 he forms part of the Nul movement with Armando, Henderikse and Peeters. After the group abolishes itself, Schoonhoven carries on working along the same lines. From 1978 he more often deviates from the strict geometry in his line drawings and his works become more expressionist and his style more personal.
Besides his work in the visual arts, from 1946 up to his retirement in 1979 Schoonhoven had a full-time job as a civil servant at the Post Office; this position, within which he had absolutely no career aspirations, gave structure to his life.