Nicolás García Uriburu

Nicolás García Uriburu (December 24, 1937 – June 19, 2016) was an Argentine contemporary artist, landscape architect, and ecologist. His work in land art was aimed at raising consciousness about environmental issues such as water pollution.

Life and work

Born in Buenos Aires in 1937, García Uriburu began painting at an early age and, in 1954, secured his first exhibition at the local Müller Gallery. He enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires, where he received a degree in architecture, and relocated to Paris with his wife, Blanca Isabel Álvarez de Toledo, in 1965. He would later father a child named "Azul" with Blanca. His ''Three Graces'', a sculpture in the pop art style, earned him a Grand Prize at the National Sculpture Salon in 1968. Venturing into conceptual art, he mounted an acrylic display at the Iris Clert Gallery, creating an artificial garden that set a new direction for García Uriburu's work towards environmental activism.MALBA: Nicolás García Uriburu

He was invited to the prestigious Venice Biennale in June 1968, where García Uriburu dyed Venice's Grand Canal using fluorescein, a pigment which turns a bright green when synthesized by microorganisms in the water. Between 1968 and 1970, he repeated the feat in New York's East River, the Seine, in Paris, and in Buenos Aires, initially at the mouth of polluted southside Riachuelo but was carried out in the Rio de la Plata instead.

A pioneer in what became known as land art, he created a montage in pastel colors over photographs of the scenes in 1970, allowing the unlimited photographic reproduction of the work for the sake of raising awareness of worsening water pollution, worldwide. In addition to environmental conservation he also produced works of art that showcased humanistic naturalism and an antagonism between society and nature, such as: ''Unión de Latinoamérica por los ríos , and No a las fronteras políticas ''.

García Uriburu applied his fluorescein treatment on such diverse waterways as Paris' Lac de Vincennes (1971), the Trocadéro fountains (1972), the Port of Nice (1974) and the Port of Antwerp (1974). He continued to devote his art to the portrayal of endangered species and habitat loss, and was honored with a Grand Prize at the Tokyo Biennale in 1975. In 1981, he was invited by the German Green Party to dye the Rhine during a national day of protest called "Wasserfest." Here he was approached by Joseph Beuys, who had been a co-founder of the Green Party, and asked if he could collaborate. The two artists would go on to collaborate the following year at the Kassel Documenta 7 exposition to carry out Beuys's project of planting 7,000 oaks. He and Beuys shared similar views on Humanism, social philosophy, ecology and libertarianism.

García Uriburu returned to Buenos Aires in 1982, following which he planted 50,000 trees. Remaining active in the city's tree-planting effort, he turned to portrait art and in 1993, was invited to the renowned Ruth Benzacar Gallery on Florida Street to present ''Utopía del Sur'' (''Southern Utopia''), a display devoted to his cause.

During the final years while still active in his cause in Argentina, García Uriburu directed tree-planting efforts in neighboring Uruguay and organized protests over the unabated degradation of Buenos Aires' industrial Riachuelo waterway, jointly with Greenpeace. He also taught secondary school students and presided over the Foundation; which bears his name, displays his art and houses an extensive ethnographic museum devoted to Pre-Columbian art.

In 2010, Nicolás Uriburu received the Creative Careers Award from the Center for Creativity Economics of Universidad del CEMA. "It is very difficult to make a true contribution to modern art, which changes the art we see and the way we think about it. It is also very difficult to make a true contribution to raising awareness of social problems such as the destruction of the environment. When someone does both, with elegance and humility, it is an extraordinary achievement," David Galenson, Academic Director of the Center for Creativity Economics, said on the occasion. Elias, Julio, 201
"Nicolas Uriburu, Artista del Sur"
Clarin.com.

In 2017, García Uriburu was again invited to the Venice Biennale, this time, as part of the main exhibition, titled ''VIVA ARTE VIVA''.

Prizes and recognition

Uriburu has earned a number of prizes both in his native Argentina and abroad:

*Gran Premio de Pintura Nacional (National Grand prize in Painting, Argentina 1968)
*Prix Lefranc (Paris, 1968)
*1st place Tokyo Biennial (Tokyo, 1975)
*Premio Braque (Buenos Aires, 1993)
*Primer Premio Otium Ecología (Buenos Aires, 1993)
*Fondo Nacional de las Artes’ Premio a la Trayectoria (National Fund for the Arts: Career achievement award, Argentina 2000)
*2010, Premio Carreras Creativas, Centro de Economía de la Creatividad, Universidad del CEMA, Buenos Aires.
*Platinum Konex Award (Konex Foundation, Argentina 2002)

See also

* Land art
*Joseph Beuys
*Conservation movement

External links

Nicolas Uriburu Foundation

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Garcia Uriburu, Nicolas
1937 births
2016 deaths
Argentine contemporary artists
Argentine painters
Argentine male painters
Argentine portrait painters
Argentine educators
Architects from Buenos Aires
Argentine landscape architects
Argentine ecologists
Argentine environmentalists
Argentine people of Spanish descent
Burials at La Chacarita Cemetery