In his article “La Densa Nube del Ser” [The Dense Cloud of the Self], published in El Espectador in Bogotá on October 12, 1958, the Colombian poet, writer, and publisher of the cultural magazine Mito [Myth] Jorge Gaitán Durán waxes poetic in his critique of Aguadas [Watering Holes], the first exhibition of works by the Colombian sculptor Feliza Bursztyn. Gaitán Durán describes the works in the exhibition and refers to the power of line and volume in Bursztyn’s figures; he discusses the somber nature of the images, finding them to be “pure presence” while comparing them to Rembrandt’s portraits. He also discusses the materials and the support, which he describes as: “bits and pieces of cardboard and yellow card, sheets of paper ripped from a notebook,” and the technique, with which he is less impressed. He considers these elements to be complementary to the work, since they compensate for the weakness of its material expression by revealing “the emergence of a dense cloud of self.”

This is the only article written by the poet Jorge Gaitán Durán (1924–1962) on the work of Feliza Bursztyn (1933–1982). Its importance is due to the author’s familiarity with the sculptor’s work; they had traveled to Paris together, where she studied sculpture at the Grande Chaumière academy with the Russian sculptor Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) from about 1954 to about 1958. That is where Bursztyn met the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) and in 1960 learned how to weld and work with scrap metal from the French sculptor affiliated with the French [movement] Nouveau Réalisme, César Baldaccini (1921–1998). She found new opportunities after being unable to cast sculpture in Colombia.

In a posthumously published interview, Bursztyn mentions the poet Gaitán Durán and his influence in her life. She says “You know, if I am a sculptor, I owe it to Jorge. One never does anything for anyone. Things just work out. My marriage was on the rocks; I was tired of it and wanted a separation. One day I met Jorge at “El Excélsior,” a café in a tunnel where 200 people crowd in, one on top of another. He asked me to join him for lunch, I said yes, and bam…! A week later we were living together! He could do eighteen things at the same time; he had an amazing capacity for work. That helped me a great deal when I was working on a sculpture, which is donkey’s work.” (“Entrevista trunca con Feliza Bursztyn” [Incomplete Interview with Feliza Bursztyn], Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda. Cromos, Bogotá, March 8, 1983).