An abstract expressionist painter and Mississippi’s most acclaimed modernist artist of the post-war era, Dusti Bongé had a remarkable career that connected the vibrant art communities of Biloxi, Mississippi, New Orleans, and New York. She was one of the pioneering women artists represented by the Betty Parsons Gallery, alongside Judith Godwin, Perle Fine, Agnes Martin, and Hedda Stern. A single mother who chose to reside and work outside the New York art scene while raising her son in her hometown of Biloxi, Bongé broke boundaries and challenged stereotypes, forging a singular path to success. Her paintings fuse the influences of the New York School with colors and forms inspired by the Gulf Coast.



Largely self-taught, Bongé began painting local scenes of Biloxi in the late 1930s, fusing regional imagery with international artistic influences including Cubism, Surrealism, and Fauvism. She visited New York galleries regularly and was first introduced to Betty Parsons in 1945, while presenting her work at Mortimer Brandt Gallery, where Parsons was running the contemporary art division. Parsons was impressed with Bongé’s painting and, when she opened her own gallery in 1946, exhibited several of Bongé’s watercolors. In the mid 1950s, Bongé joined Betty Parson’s stable and was featured in solo exhibitions in 1956, 1958, 1960, 1962, and 1975.



In the summer of 1954 Bongé and Parsons traveled throughout Mexico, accompanied by Bongé’s friend, photographer Jack Robinson. This trip proved to be incredibly influential for Bongé, shaping a more expressive, unconstrained approach. She noted of this period: “During the 1950s, I began painting totally in the abstract. It gave me great joy. I began to work with very large canvases and brushes. They seemed to give me the freedom that I needed.” (1)  



Born Eunice Lyle Swetman in 1903, Bongé grew up among the natural beauty of a Southern coastal city, an environment which later provided inspiration for her abstractions. After graduating from Blue Mountain College in Mississippi in 1922, she moved to Chicago to pursue a career as an actress. In 1928, Bongé created her first artwork, a pastel floral still life, as a surprise gift for her artist husband Archie following an argument. Impressed with the drawing, he encouraged her to continue drawing and painting, instructing her informally and introducing her to artists, galleries, curators, and critics. He recommended that she not to dilute her own vision with formal training, which was advice she largely followed throughout her career.



Following Archie’s death in 1936, in search of a new direction, Bongé began developing her own career as professional painter, while raising Lyle, who was then seven years old. In the 1950s, Bongé became an important point of connection between the New York and New Orleans artistic communities, developing friendships with both Theodoros Stamos, who visited her in Biloxi, and New Orleans painter George Dunbar, whom she introduced to Parsons. Through Lyle, who had attended Black Mountain College and become a well-regarded photographer, Bongé met many of the artists of the Black Mountain group including Jonathan Williams, M.C. Richards, and John Cage. Through Parsons, Cage, and M.C. Richards, Bongé became interested in Zen Buddhism.



Over the course her career, Bongé exhibited in numerous group and solo exhibitions. In addition to her exhibitions at Betty Parsons, she was featured in group shows at the Mississippi Museum of Art (1953), Museum of Modern Art New York (1955), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Texas (1956), Dallas Museum of Art (1956), Whitney Museum of Art (1956), Museo Nacional, Havana, Cuba (1956), Brooklyn Museum of Fine Arts (1959) and Birmingham Museum of Art (1959).  Following her death, she received major retrospectives at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art, Mississippi (1995 and 2013), Mobile Museum of Art, Alabama (2006), and most recently the traveling exhibition Piercing the Inner Wall: The Art of Dusti Bongé organized by the Ogden Museum of Southern Art (2019-21). Her paintings are in numerous public collections including the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Mississippi Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts.



1. Dusti Bongé, “The Life of an Artist” quoted in J. Richard Gruber, Dusti Bongé Art and Life: Biloxi, New Orleans, New York (Dusti Bongé Art Foundation: Biloxi, MI, 2019), p. 224.