Artwork of the 80's
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Artists & Works

Feliciano Bejar
MAGISCOPE (1971)
crystal
4” x 2.5”
Mexican (1920-)
MAGISCOPE (1971)
crystal
13.5” x 3.5”

STYLE: 70s SCULPTURE, CARBORUNDUM COLLECTION

  

Primarily a self-taught artist, Feliciano Bejar is known for his experimental sculpture using metal, crystal, plastic, and stained glass. He is also a set designer and architect, and in the nineties turned to landscape development, restoring a piece of land in his native Mexico. Bejar has had one-man shows world-wide and his work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Dartmouth College, the Biblioteque Nationale, Paris, and many other collections.

This work was donated to the Castellani Art Museum by the Carborundum Corporation, who during the seventies commissioned artists to design awards for their “Award of Excellence” program. Bejar was commissioned to design such an award in 1974.

Bejar explains his magiscope sculptures: "Some distort, some define, but always they give us a new vision. As their generic name indicates, they are instruments to see magically, to see the magic and poetry that exists all around us all the time, but that our indifferent eyes do not wish to perceive." Recently, Bejar has been involved in political activism in Mexico.

CRITICAL EXCERPTS

Carborundum Award for Excellence, 1974 (commemorative booklet)
"Bejar is a rebel against specialization, the limits imposed by industrialization, and man’s use--or misuse--of machines. So he--the total artist--welds the steel, grinds the crystal and mixes the concrete that becomes his work."
Pamela Kessler, Washington Post, 6/20/87
"While religious imagery may be associated with primitive Mexican art, still the Catholic imprint comes out subconsciously in the more sophisticated. It is there in Feliciano Bejar's monstrancelike sculpture: a giant magnifying glass that tops an iron base resembling a car's axle. The glass is beveled crystal with overlapping circles; placed in front of a glass doorway in the gallery, like a prism the circles pull in images -- a BMW parked on the street, times 50."