Betty Parsons

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Betty Parsons (1900 - 1982) was an American artist and legendary art dealer known for her early promotion of Abstract Expressionism. She was known as "the den mother of Abstract Expressionism" [1]

In 1946 she opened the Betty Parsons Gallery, which specialized in Abstract Expressionism. She showed work by Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Ellsworth Kelly, Mark Rothko and Robert Rauschenberg among others. Helen Frankenthaler, the painter, who met Parsons in 1950, said: "Betty and her gallery helped construct the center of the art world. She was one of the last of her breed." Many of the Abstract Expressionist artists she launched left her gallery for more commercial galleries. Art critic, B. H. Friedman: "She was resentful. She had struggled so long to get them established, and other dealers capitalized on her efforts." Her other artists include Agnes Martin, Richard Pousette-Dart and Richard Tuttle. She ran the gallery until her death in 1982. [2]

Betty Parsons was also a painter. Her work is held in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Museum of Women in the Arts.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.npg.si.edu/cexh/artnews/parsons.htm
  2. ^ http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE4D7143EF93BA15755C0A964958260 Carol Strickland, Betty Parsons's 2 Lives: She Was Artist, Too, The New York Times, June 28, 1982

[edit] External links

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