biography of Betty PARSONS (1900-1982)

Birth place: NYC

Addresses: NYC

Profession: Painter, sculptor, art dealer

Studied: Renee Praha, NYC; sculptor Bourdelle, in Paris, France; sculpture with Archipenko & Zadkine; summers in Brittany studying watercolor with Arthur Lindsey.

Exhibited: Gal. de Quatres Chemins, Paris, 1927 (1st solo); Midtown Gal., NYC (many solo shows of her watercolors, beginning 1936); WMAA biennials, 1952-57; PAFA Jury Meeting, 1957; Nat. Council Women of the U.S., 1959; Am. Abstract Artists, 1962; Soc. Four Artists, 1964; "Artists of Suffolk County, Part II: Abstract Tradition," Reckscher Mus., 1970; Montclair Art Mus., 1974 (retro.)

Work: Montclair (NJ) Art Mus.; NMAA; WMAA

Comments: Owner & dir., Betty Parsons Gal., a gallery of seminal importance for the artists of the New York School emerging in the 1940s. When she opened her gallery in 1946 Parsons helped launch the careers of Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and other Abstract Expressionists. As a dealer, Parsons was noted for giving her gallery artists a great deal of freedom, allowing them, for example, to hang their own paintings for solo shows. Parsons was herself an artist and during the 1920s, while studying in Paris, associated with Man Ray, Gertrude Stein, Alexander Calder, and Tristan Tzara. On returning to the U.S. in 1933, she taught for several years in Santa Barbara, CA, before settling in NYC in 1936. She exhibited traditional watercolors during that decade and in the 1940s moved into abstraction. Parsons' sculptures are also abstract, and she tended to use natural materials such as driftwood and stone. Teaching: creativity seminar, Sarah Lawrence College, spring 1972. Specialty of her gallery: exclusively contemp. art. Collection: predominantly contemp. art.

Sources: WW73; Rubinstein, American Women Artists, 276-78; E. Glazebrook, "One of the Early Birds," The Times (London), Dec. 16, 1968; N. Gosline, "Not a Time to Worship," The Observer Rev., Nov. 24, 1968, Dora Z. Meilach, Creating Art from Anything (1968)