HALF A CENTURY OF THE GRAN CANAL DE VENECIA COLORATION, THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS IN BUENOS AIRES HONORS NICOLÁS GARCIA URIBURU
The exhibition Venice in green key. Nicolás García Uriburu and the coloration of the Grand Canal will open today at the National Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibition commemorates the 50th anniversary of the intervention of the Argentine artist in the waters of Venice on June 19, 1968.
"Nicolás García Uriburu is a fundamental reference of land art and, at the same time, a pioneer of the ecological conscience that he formulated with the language of artistic action", explains Andrés Duprat, director of Fine Arts. "Dyeing the waters of the canals of Venice during the Biennial of 1968, Uriburu proposed a double reading in a single gesture: on the one hand, by restoring its coloration it denounced the human activity that turns nature into a useless artifice. On the other hand, the disruption of the action, which was carried out clandestinely, without the protection of the institutions, put into question the system of the arts according to the spirit of the time, "he adds.
The exhibition, curated by Mariana Marchesi - artistic director of the Museum -, is concentrated in the period from 1968 to 1974 gathering screenprints, photographs taken and documentary pieces referring to the coloring of 68 and other historical colorations, as well as a select group of paintings made in those years.
Within the framework of the XXXIV Venice Biennial convulsed after the events of the French May, García Uriburu carried out an artistic action that, with time, would mark a defining moment of his career. With the coloration of the Grand Canal, framed within the early manifestations of performance and conceptualism, the Argentine artist reflected on the role of painting and the aesthetic alternatives of the avant-garde, which advocated the fusion of art with life.
After some months of research, he chose to use a fluorescent substance to dye the waters, since it met the necessary visual and environmental conditions: harmless for flora and fauna, green and uniform coloring. This initiative was the origin of the numerous interventions in nature that the artist developed in different waters of the world -in Buenos Aires, Paris, Brussels, London-, and that marked the direction of his later works, always marked by his concern for the environment.
"Venice in green key. Nicolás García Uriburu and the coloration of the Grand Canal "has the support of the Nicolás García Uriburu Foundation and the Friends Association of the National Museum of Fine Arts, and may be visited from June 29 to September 30 in rooms 39 and 40 of the Museum .
