Nicolas Garcia Uriburu

Nicolas Garcia Uriburu was born on 24 December 1937 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. To satisfy his father, he studied architecture at the University of Buenos Aires and graduated; he relocated to Paris in 1965 after receiving the Premio Braque. His exact enrollment and graduation years are not documented in available sources. His first solo exhibition, of humorous drawings, was held at Galeria Muller in 1954, followed by a solo show of informalist paintings at Galeria Lirolay in 1960.

He achieved international recognition in 1968 during the Venice Biennale, when he dyed the Grand Canal green using fluorescein, a harmless dye, as a public statement on water pollution. He repeated and extended the gesture over the following decades, coloring rivers and waterways in Buenos Aires, New York, Paris, and elsewhere, and in 1970 staged Hidrocromia Intercontinental, a coordinated coloration action across Venice, New York, Paris, and Buenos Aires. He was invited by Joseph Beuys to participate in documenta 7 in Kassel in 1982. In Argentina he became known for civic tree-planting actions, including a large planting on Avenida 9 de Julio in Buenos Aires on 9 July 1987 that he repeated on the same national holiday in later years.

Alongside his art, Garcia Uriburu collected pre-Columbian art and Uruguayan national painting and sculpture, portions of which he later donated to Argentine and Uruguayan public institutions. He established the Fundacion Nicolas Garcia Uriburu to preserve his archive, library, and body of work. He died on 19 June 2016 in Buenos Aires at the age of 78. Spanish-language sources report the cause as a heart attack, though at least one source notes the cause was never made fully public.

Garcia Uriburu is consistently framed by museums and the art press as a pioneer of ecological and land art whose gesture at the 1968 Venice Biennale anticipated much of the environmental art movement that followed. Tate describes him as an Argentine artist, landscape architect, and ecologist. La Nacion, in its 2016 obituary, called him an artist of pop sensibility with a strong environmental commitment, a description that captures how critics have read his career as a bridge between the visual language of Pop art and an activist, ecological agenda. ArtReview's 2016 notice of his death situated him within the broader story of postwar Argentine art. No verifiable verbatim critic quotations from named critics in major outlets could be confirmed for this profile.

Garcia Uriburu's auction market is thin and largely regional compared with his museum standing. His current auction high is Latin America. Nature reserves of the future. United or Subjugated (1973), which sold for USD 204,000 at Digard Auction in Paris on 24 October 2024, a result reported by the Argentine financial daily Ambito as a new auction record for the artist. The same Digard sale produced the second-highest confirmed result, USD 151,000 for Iguazu, Nocturno (1987). Christie's New York had previously realized USD 131,250 for Untitled (Guggenheim Museum from the Green Series) in a Latin American Art sale reported in November 2016, now the third-highest confirmed result; the exact sale date is not stated in the available results. At Millon in Paris, the painting Ombu sold for EUR 118,652 on 10 May 2022, a result the house listed as its own auction record for the artist at the time, a designation that predates the 2024 Digard sale. Local Argentine sales, at houses such as Quiroga Zarate and Arroyo, have produced smaller results in pesos for works on paper and canvas. Outside the auction room, Roldan Gallery reported selling Plaza San Martin (1978) to Banco Santander Rio for USD 180,000 at the arteBA fair, a primary or secondary market transaction rather than an auction result.

There is no published catalogue raisonne for Garcia Uriburu. The Fundacion Nicolas Garcia Uriburu, run by his family, holds the artist's archive and library and is the most credible point of reference for questions of attribution and provenance. His auction market is small and geographically dispersed across Argentina, France, and occasional international sales, which means results can vary widely by venue and are not yet supported by a long, liquid price history. Collectors should weigh his deep museum presence, at MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum, Tate, and Malba among others, more heavily than any single auction data point, including the current record price set at the 2024 Paris sale.