Dusti Bongé Surrealism figure
The artistic movement known as Surrealism, best identified with Salvador Dalí, celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2024. Dusti Bongé routinely painted in a Surrealistic fashion. Here is one example, with analysis of the artwork from Dusti Bongé Art Foundation Executive Director Ligia M. Römer.
Dusti Bongé, Untitled (Surrealist Figure with Blue, Yellow and Red), c.1945, mixed media on paper, 11 ½” x 9”
Here is one of Dusti Bongé’s surrealist works from the mid-1940s. This was an interesting time in Dusti’s career. Her depictions of local scenes, still lifes, and other subject matter from her immediate surroundings took on a distinctive cubist-inspired style. But she simultaneously produced an array of works where she was developing her very own surrealist language.
Surrealism was a movement that did not favor a particular aesthetic style, but rather an artistic approach, one where the artist engages in an uninhibited mode of expression relying on the mind’s subconscious mechanisms, such as dreams. This led to a rich range of exploration where artists created works not controlled by reason.
Dusti herself often found inspiration in her dreams, but she also had an inherent deep appreciation of the splendidly fantastical and mysteriously uncanny nature of life, as evidenced in her Circus Series and her Keyhole People, respectively.
In her surrealist work, Dusti tended to focus on “human” figures. These works, transitioning from her bizarre Circus Series to her eerie Keyhole People, offer a wonderfully rich array of figures in all kinds of enigmatic, at times slightly preternatural, and yet also humorous situations.
This figure, rendered in a light gray wash partially enveloped by a cloud of blackness, set against a backdrop of jewel toned reds, yellows, and blues, appears to be either dancing joyously, of perhaps falling into a precipitous unknown. The ambiguity of what’s actually happening, i.e., what the character is experiencing, paired with the very fluid and abstracted presentation of its physique, and the absence of any particulars in the background, all add to the overall surreal quality of the work.
