The nature-versus-culture debate exists due to technological advances. Since the sixties, few artists have made defending Nature the leitmotiv of their work. Of what was originally called Land Art, or direct action on nature, some projects can be seen as part of the international ecology movement.

see colorations video




Coloration du Grand Canal, Venice, 1968 | enlarge		   The first large-scale project of this sort was carried out by Argentine artist Nicolas García Uriburu when, in June of 1968, during the Venice Biennial, he dyed the waters of the Gran Canal (3 Km.) to protest the polluting of these waters. He was followed by Robert Smithson with his Spiral Jetty in April of 1970, and Robert Morris with the Ottawa Project in May of 1970.

In the 21st century, the environment is threatened by global warming, the destruction of tropical forests, excessive fishing and a shortage of drinking water. Only 2% of the world’s water is fresh water, and most of it is frozen in glaciers and icecaps.

Uriburu’s concern with these issues is evident in his work; whether they entail interventions in nature, paintings or sociological actions, his message is alarming. His colorings of waters around the world are innumerable, as are his manifestos against the indiscriminate destruction of the Amazon, which French critic Pierre Restany, in his Río Negro Manifesto (1978), called “the last reserve of integral nature,” or against tree plantations in different places around the world.




Coloration Fontaine du Lac de Vincennes, Paris, 1971 | enlarge		  

Coloration des Fontaines du Trocadéro, Paris, 1972 | enlarge		  

Coloration de la Fontaine du Soleil, Nice, 1974 | enlarge




Coloration of the Port of Nice, 1974 | enlarge		  

Coloration of the Port of Antwerp, Belgium, 1974 | enlarge 		 

Rhein Water Polluted H2O + 10.000 Poisons Green Colloration, Düsseldorf, 9/28/1981




Uriburu and Beuys. Plantation of 7.000 oaks, Documenta 7, Kassel, 1981 		  Uriburu’s art action is what German artist Joseph Beuys called social plastic. Beuys and Uriburu worked together on several occasions: the Rhein Water Polluted project in 1981 and the planting of 7000 oak trees during Documenta 7 in 1981. They were connected by a humanist, libertarian and utopian project. In his “Discourse on my country,” Beuys maintains that socio-ecological confrontation begins with the fact that “each man is an artist,” that is, with the concept of creativity geared towards the social whole. This creates a socio-ecological work where it is possible to nip in the bud damage to the environment. If understood, work like that of Greenpeace, for example, is admirable and important. But knowledge and the approach to it is even more important. It constructs the social whole according to its logic, on the basis of the creative man as the creator of the world, of freedom ranging from the right to new economic laws to a credit system useful to everyone. It is essential to create that which helps the world.

Starting in the late sixties and on into the present, I attended, along with Nicolas, countless actions in Argentina and abroad. During that period, I understood the scope of his message and its importance in contemporary art.




Green Hatchiko, Tokio, 1982		  

Coloration of Fuente del Monumento a los Españoles, Buenos Aires, 1983 | enlarge		  

Coloration Fontaine du Louvre, Paris, 1989 | enlarge		  

Coloration Uriburu 500 años de Polución Río de la Plata, Dock 3, 24/10/92


Uriburu is a faithful believer in life; his humanist, socialist and utopian vision grows out of his firm social and artistic commitment.

Without man we can not understand the aims of Nature, the concept of humanity as a sum of individuals in the process of being perfected.

The individual is of interest in terms of his participation in the social movement. Current problems- overpopulation, risks to the environment, violence, hunger- affect us all, and it is our responsibility to take a stand. Beuys’s “each man is an artist” is aimed at that responsibility.		  

Uriburu colorating the waters of MASP, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, 1992




Proyecto Yaguareté, Buenos Aires, 1998
Joint action with Greenpeace		  

Basta de contaminar (Stop the polution), Riachuelo, Buenos Aires, 1999
Joint action with Greenpeace | enlarge | see video





Label of coloration bottle, 2000/12/24		   In Universal Life, America is a symbol for the continent of hope, as Eva Perón said in 1947. I believe that, for Latin Americans, the 21st century is about union; that is the only way the social movement will make sense in a globalized and wholly dehumanized world.

Joaquin Molina