Feliza Bursztyn

Fanny Mikey says goodbye to Feliza Bursztyn at Eldorado Airport when she left the country to go into exile in Mexico. August 8, 1981

Feliza Bursztyn. Escultura pública. "Homenaje a Gandhi" 1971 in Bogotá

Feliza Bursztyn (born September 8, 1933 in Bogotá , Colombia , † January 8, 1982 in Paris ) was a Colombian sculptor . She used scrap iron and stainless steel waste for her works .

life and work

Bursztyn was born in Colombia in 1933, the daughter of Polish Jewish immigrants who were visiting Bogotá at the time of their birth. The news that Adolf Hitler had been elected in Germany made her parents stay in Colombia, where her father set up a small textile factory. She studied painting at the Art Students League in New York City and with the cubist sculptor Ossip Zadkine sculpture at the La Grande Chaumière Academy in Paris . On December 6, 1952, she married Lawrence Fleischer, with whom they had three daughters. In 1960 she converted part of her father's factory into an art studio and learned how to melt and work with scrap from the sculptor César Baldaccini on her second trip to Europe . Bursztyn's workshop in Bogotá was a meeting place for many writers, artists and intellectuals, including Gabriel García Márquez , Alejandro Obregón , Marta Traba , Santiago García , Jorge Gaitán Durán , Fernando Martínez Sanabria and Hernando Valencia Goelke . Bursztyn never shied away from supporting left opposition movements. After a trip to Cuba , the Colombian political police accused her of smuggling weapons to the partisans through her studio. In 1981 she received political asylum in Mexico and later emigrated to Paris. Bursztyn's artworks have been collected privately and by public institutions such as the Museo de arte Moderno, the Museo Nacional de Colombia and the Banco de la Republica in Bogotá and the Tate Gallery of Modern Art in London . She died in exile in Paris and left many of her works to the Colombian Ministry of Culture and the National Museum of Colombia. To commemorate her 81st birthday, Google published a Google Doodle on September 8, 2004 .

Awards

1965: First Prize for Sculpture, XVII National Salon
1965: First prize for sculptures XVII Colombian Artists Salon for "Mirando al Norte"
1967: Third prize in the XIX Salon of National Artists

Solo exhibitions

1958: Galería el Callejón, Bogotá
1964: Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá
1974: Museo de Arta Moderno La Tertulia, Cali, Colombia
1979: Galería Garcés Velásquez, Bogotá
2009: Museo Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá
2015: Leon Tovar Gallery at ARCOmadrid
2016: Galería la Cometa at ARTBO 2016, Bogotá
2017: Leon Tovar Gallery at ARCOmadrid 2017
2018: Leon Tovar Gallery at ARTBO, Bogotá
2019: Leon Tovar Gallery at ARCOmadrid

literature

Feliza Bursztyn: Baila Mecanica, Museo de Arte Moderno La Tertulia, Cali, 1979
Feliza Bursztyn; Bernardo Salcedo; Jorge Jaramillo jaramillo: Demostraciones, Bogotá, 2007
Feliza Bursztyn: Elogio de la chatarra, Museo Nacional de Colombia, 2009

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Bursztyn, Feliza
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Colombian sculptress
DATE OF BIRTH	September 8, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH	Bogotá , Colombia
DATE OF DEATH	January 8, 1982
Place of death	Paris