In 1954, Alberto Greco (Buenos Aires, 1931–Barcelona, 1965) went to Paris on a literary scholarship. He had his first European exhibition the following year. In 1956 Greco had an exhibition in Buenos Aires and a year later went to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, where he called himself a “tachista” painter (the reference is not to “Tachisme” but to “tacho de basura” [garbage can]). He was a great promoter of Informalism in Buenos Aires. At Galería Pizarro, he presented Pinturas Negras [Black Paintings] in 1960 and Las Monjas [The Nuns] the following year. Greco settled in Paris in 1961, where he began to develop his ideas concerning Arte Vivo [Living Art], which involved situations, objects, and people in the streets. He took his Arte Vivo productions to Rome, Venice, Madrid, Piedralaves (Avila, Spain), Paris, and New York, calling them “Vivo-Dito,” which could perhaps be understood to mean “to point at experiences (with one’s finger).” He was in touch with avant-garde Spanish artists of the period, such as Antonio Saura and Manolo Millares. Greco committed suicide in Barcelona in 1965.
This document, which is related to Manifiesto Dito dell’Arte Vivo [Living-Finger Art Manifesto] (Genoa, July 24, 1962) and Gran Manifiesto-Rollo del Arte Vivo Dito [Grand Manifesto-Paper Roll of Living-Finger Art] (Piedralaves, 1963), sheds some light on Greco’s ideas concerning the relationship between art and life, and on his aesthetic action program. The contents and beginning of this draft are more in line with the former, which appears to be a summary and a rework of this draft intended for public distribution. The Italian manifesto begins by saying: “L’arte vivo è l’aventura del reale” [“Live art is the adventure of the real”]. It is a variation on what is involved in this draft, which contains items that have been crossed out, corrections, and drawings, making it both a historical document and one of Greco’s art objects. The Arte Vivo-Dito Manifesto is an essential document of Argentinean conceptualism.