Bringing the Art to You Week #18 Untitled (Red Circle and Rectangle with Yellow, Blue and Black) , 1976. tempera on board, 11” x 8”. Paul Bongé Collection Dusti Bongé’s output of work during the 1970s includes a lot of small to medium sized works on paper where she is experimenting with various color compositions. Her work is still completely abstract but the style has changed subtlety. Retaining her bold expressive strokes, Dusti now starts to use them in a way that suggests more distinctive shapes or forms than in her earlier works. These forms, although mostly non-representational, nonetheless offer the viewer something concrete to focus on. They are familiar shapes like circles, or rectangles, or trapezoids, or totems. They set up a certain foreground-background interplay, given that as figures they inherently demand a ground. In addition, they interact through their relative positions to one another, creating tension, or movement, or depth. In this work the red “rectangle” and red circle with its yellow interior appear together as focal elements in the composition. They are prominently present in the middle ground, although the yellow spills out the back of the circle, though in front of the rectangle's right side. The red, heavy, horizontal line below this focal group, in the immediate foreground, almost sets up a sense of perspective, with the black totems in the upper right, and the one behind the rectangle, contributing to that perception of depth. Thus with a few gestures Dusti Bongé has created a powerful interplay between her various markings on the paper. Have you seen this work? Do you or someone you know have this work in their collection? If so, we would love to hear from you. We are continuously working to maintain as complete a record as possible, and to determine the location of all of Dusti Bongé's work. If you have any information on this work, you can contact us at
[email protected] We also appreciate receiving referrals to the existence and whereabouts of artworks by Dusti Bongé. Thank you. Available in our store: The definitive volume on artist Dusti Bongé, by J. Richard Gruber Dusti Bongé, Art and Life: Biloxi, New Orleans, New York Hard bound, 12” x 9”, 350 pages, over 500 color and b&w illustrations Limited edition lithographs of two original Dusti Bongé drawings. Shrimp Boats & Factories, Back Bay Biloxi I and Shrimp Boats & Factories, Back Bay Biloxi II 12” x 16” drawing, 15” x 22” paper size https://www.dustibonge.org/store.html support us Our mission: to promote the artistic legacy of Dusti Bongé (1903-1993)
