Portraits of George Ohr, c1900
George Ohr (1857-1918) of Biloxi has been called the "first of the artist-potters in the United States and arguably the finest," Ohr was the son of a young immigrant couple who came to Biloxi in 1853 and established the first blacksmith shop in town. George Edgar Ohr, their first son, would grow up to be a flamboyant and memorable figure in his hometown of Biloxi, as well as a well-known potter in America. After his schooling, he tried a number of trades that did not suit him. George Ohr later wrote, "When I found the potter's wheel I felt it all over like a wild duck in water." He built his own pottery in Biloxi where his shop became a tourist attraction for over a quarter century. Through the years he exhibited his wares at six World Fairs, and although his work was never popular with collectors, art pottery critics recognized his skill. Ohr died of cancer in Biloxi in 1918. The artistic acclaim that he had envisioned began a half-century later. In 1968, his pots, which he had packed up 60 years earlier, began to come on the market. Today some art historians consider George Ohr’s pottery to be among the first modern art produced in America, transcending the boundaries of art pottery. He manipulated his clay into unusual and original shapes, distorting the shape with pinching, twisting, ruffling, and denting. In his subjectivity and gestural approach he anticipated Expressionism.
All photographs of Ohr pottery are courtesy of the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art, Biloxi, MS
Face vase c1895, Glazed ceramic, 7 ½” x 6”. Courtesy of Norma and Dona Carpenter, Biloxi, MS	Double-handled vase.  Glazed ceramic, 7 ¼” x 7 ¼”. Private Collection
	Dusti Bonge’ (1903-1993) also of Biloxi, was the first modernist painter in Mississippi, and exhibited in New York with the major figures of the Abstract Expressionist movement in America. Born Eunice Lyle Swetman, she graduated from Blue Mountain College then went to Chicago to study theater. She moved to New York in 1926 and worked steadily in theater and film. In 1928, she married Arch Bongé, an artist, and continued her career in theater until 1929, when she gave birth to a son. The family moved to Biloxi in 1935, and within two years, Arch Bongé died at the Veteran’s Hospital in Biloxi. After Arch’s death, Dusti began working with his brushes and paint. Her first exhibition in New York was in 1939. After World War II, she met Betty Parsons who played a major part in her career. Betty Parsons’ Gallery opened in 1946 and became famous for promoting a new generation of American artists, including Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Parsons helped shift the domination of world art from the School of Paris, led by Picasso, to the New York School. Bongé exhibited at Parsons Gallery from 1952 to 1976. Bongé died in Biloxi at the age of ninety in 1993. The Dusti Bongé Art Foundation was established by the family in 1996 to conserve and maintain her work.
Graduation photograph of Eunice Swetman, 1920, courtesy of Dusti Bonge’ Foundation.   Dusti Bonge’ acquired her nickname in Manhattan in the 1920s.
“Biloxi Yacht Club” oil pastel, 18:x20”
“Untitled” Joss paper watercolors, each 4” x 4”
Walter Anderson (1903-1965) was born in New Orleans to Annette McConnell Anderson, an artist, and George W. Anderson, a successful grain exporter. In 1918, his mother bought a house and acreage on Biloxi Bay in Ocean Springs, and in the summer of 1922 the family moved to Ocean Springs. Anderson graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and then joined his brother Peter in Ocean Springs, to decorate pottery in the studio called “Shearwater.” In his spare time Anderson pursued oil painting, watercolors, woodcarving and printmaking. In 1933, he married Agnes Grinstead, a Radcliffe graduate from Chicago, whose family had a summer home in Gautier. Their life was interrupted in the mid-1930s, when Anderson spent several sessions in mental institutions. After 1947, he lived apart from his wife and four children and in a private and solitary existence as an artist. In the 1950s, he began rowing out to Horn Island, where he spent eighteen years drawing and painting watercolors of its flora and fauna. Anderson died of cancer in 1965. His legacy is an amazing body of writing, murals and art, which can be seen at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art, which opened in Ocean Springs in 1991.       Rower (self-portrait), watercolor
	Walter Anderson on a bench, 1930
“Stokesia,” block print, 7 ¾” x 5 7/10”	“Two Striped Kittens,” watercolor 11” x 8 ½”
Richmond Barthe’ (1901-1989) was born in Bay St. Louis to Richmond Barthé and Marie Clementine Roboteau, Creoles of mixed French, Spanish, Negro and Indian ancestry. At fourteen Barthé dropped out of school to work. In 1915 he was offered a job in New Orleans at the home of the Harry Ponds family. He spent eight years there as a butler, before his future came into focus at age 23. His parish priest recognized his art talent and raised money for Barthe’s tuition to the Art Institute of Chicago. He enrolled in 1924. After graduation in 1928, he moved to New York City during the famous Harlem Renaissance, a time of great fruition in African American cultural and intellectual life. Barthé’s rise to the status of America’s leading Negro sculptor was steady and straight. His first exhibition was in 1929, and by 1933 was included in the Biennial of The Whitney Museum of American Art, which purchased three of his sculptures for their collection. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship, membership in the National Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Audubon Artists Gold Medal of Honor. The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased his work in 1943. Along with sculptures of urban black life, he created sculpture busts of the great actors of the day. He pioneered in classical statues of nude black men, and he worked in monumental outdoor sculpture. A windfall came in l948 when he was invited to Haiti to create public statues for the Haitian government. This work allowed him to make a move. He was at the height of his career, but after twenty years of the fast pace of Manhattan, Barthé decided to move to the serenity of Jamaica. He bought a house outside of Ocho Rios and moved there in 1951. Jamaica remained his home for twenty years. He moved briefly to Switzerland then Florence, Italy. In 1977 he returned to the United States to live in Pasadena, California. Barthé died there of cancer at the age of 88, leaving behind a graceful and significant body of work.
	Richmond Barthe’, 1928.  From the Alain Locke Papers, Moorland Spingarn Research Center.  Courtesy of Howard University, Washington, D.C.
	“Feral Benga” Richmond Barthé Courtesy Mississippi Museum of Art,  Jackson
List of Works in the Exhibit... August 8 - September 21, 2008 | Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Laurel October 2 ¬ October 30, 2008 | MSU Dept. of Art Gallery, Starkville November 7 - December 19, 2008 | E.E. Bass Cultural Center, Greenville December 30 - February 26, 2009 | GumTree Museum of Art, Tupelo April 11 ¬ July 12, 2009 | Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson July 25 ¬ August 29 2009 | University of Mississippi Museum, Oxford September 10 - October 15, 2009 | USM Museum of Art, Hattiesburg November 6, 2009 - January 10, 2010                                   | Walter Anderson Museum of Art, Ocean Springs