Week #28, Coming Home II

Dusti Bongé, Untitled (Still Life of Vegetables), 1937, pastel on paper, 8 ½” x 11

This week we share another small still life of fruits and vegetables, also from 1937. This time it is a lovely pastel drawing that Dusti Bongé executed on a standard size 8 ½” x 11” sheet of paper with three-hole punches along the bottom edge.

You’ll notice that in these early works Dusti still represents the vegetables and fruit in a fairly realistic way, insofar as shape and color are concerned. And yet there is also a certain looseness or freedom in their depiction. They are not rigidly perfect, and their proportions in relation to one another are slightly off.

In this work we see several vegetables and fruit nonchalantly piled on a round platter sitting on a yellow-toned tablecloth. The platter and tablecloth, which almost fill the page, are basically centered in the composition. And yet, the disposition of the vegetables on the platter, and with it their colors, immediately disrupt this seeming symmetry. Instead, Dusti creates a balanced, yet dynamic whole with two white squashes on the left and a variety of colored veggies on the right. This asymmetry is amplified by the diagonal brown lines in the upper right, hinting at the wood spindles of a chair back in the background.

The colors from soft yellow, to green, to orange, to brown are subtle yet rich. And Dusti captures the shadows and highlights in the shapes and surfaces of the vegetables in a range of hues, as in the white squashes with their subtle blues, greens, whites and pinks.