The oeuvre of Dutch artist Armando includes 173 bronze sculptures created between 1988 and 2017. Melanie Lange analyses the form, content, materiality and structure of the sculptural works for the first time, classifying the bronzes within the artist’s oeuvre as a whole. Six key motifs – “The Ladder”, “The Wheel”, “The Leaf”, “Head”, “Form”, and “Fragment” – embody aesthetic concepts and a credo of responsible art, which employs visual means to counteract forgetting and obscuration. Armando’s sculptures extend the contemporary historical dimension of painting to include archaic topics of early human development. In view of current developments in autocracy, violence and war, the artist’s worldview as reflected in his sculptures takes on immense relevance. First systematic analysis of Armando’s sculptural oeuvreAesthetic study of Armando’s artistic oeuvre in the context of contemporary historyArt in the field of tension between analytical reflection and mimetic empathy