Betty Parsons: painting against all odds
Hervé Lancelin, ArtCritic
May 2026
Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs: Betty Parsons does not need your retrospective indulgence. She does not need her work to be rediscovered as if unearthing a treasure inadvertently buried under the pedestals of Pollock, Rothko, or Newman. Her work existed fully, obstinately, with a density of its own that neither the fame of the men she championed nor the dull roar of the art market ever managed to stifle. What is needed, however, is to look, truly look, at what this woman put on canvas, driftwood, paper, during more than six decades of solitary and sovereign practice. […]