Nicolás Garcia Uriburu
Portfolio (Manifesto), 1973

Artist
Nicolás Garcia Uriburu

Title
Portfolio (Manifesto)

Year of creation
1973

Technique and dimensions
6 sheets, screen prints on paper, each 75 x 55 cm

Year of acquisition
2021

Acquisition of the foundation

As a pioneer of Land Art and Ecological Art, Nicolás García Uriburu was part of the international neo-avant-garde of the late 1960s. On June 19, 1968, he colored the water of the Grand Canal in Venice with a harmless fluorescent green substance. The project took place as part of the Venice Biennale, but Uriburu had not sought official approval for it. The action, which changed the appearance of the Italian city for the duration of a day, aimed to draw attention to the relationship between nature and civilization and to promote ecological awareness. After this intervention, Uriburu colored the East River in New York, the Seine in Paris, the Rio de la Plata in Buenos Aires and again the Grand Canal in Venice green. These actions were documented in Portfolio (Manifesto) (1973), a series of six screen prints that the artist made to disseminate his ideas more widely. Although Uriburu stated that the metaphysical intention of his work was to bring people and nature back together, at the same time he saw it as a criticism of the environmental pollution committed by industrialized countries and its effects on developing countries. This was also the reason for reproducing the map of South America and the Iguazu Falls on the border between Argentina and Brazil in the portfolio.

Nicolás García Uriburu (1937 in Buenos Aires, AR; † 2016 in Buenos Aires, AR) took part in the documenta, Kassel, in 1982 at the invitation of Joseph Beuys. In 2017 his work was shown again at the Venice Biennale.