Dusti Bongé
Born in Biloxi, Mississippi, Dusti Bongé (neé Eunice Lyle Swetman), enjoyed a long and successful career from the deep South to Chicago, New York and back. As a painter she evolved from Cubism and Surrealism in the 1930s and 40s to Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s. She maintained a long friendship with NY dealer Betty Parsons and showed regularly in Parsons namesake gallery. Bongé was recently honored with a retrospective exhibition, "Piercing the Inner Wall: The Work of Dusti Bongé" at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans and the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson. Since her death her estate has been managed by the Dusti Bongé Art Foundation in Biloxi. In 2019 the Foundation published a 350 page book by J. Richard Gruber on her art and Life.