Betty Parsons: Sheer Energy
Tom Denman, Studio International
November 2025
As with many critics, it is often the case that people who set up galleries start out as artists, often going to art school. Then, sooner or later, they decide they would rather be working with or near artists than making art themselves. Not so for Betty Parsons, who was arguably just as good at both – or almost as good, only because it is hard to surmount her influence as a gallerist. When she set up her Manhattan gallery in 1946, Parsons was already a fairly successful watercolourist and sculptor, and for a decade had worked at several of New York’s galleries, including a three-year stint with Mary Quinn Sullivan, co-founder of the Museum of Modern Art. It is no understatement to say that Betty Parsons Gallery sent shockwaves through the world of modern art on an international level, as the commercial hub of the movement that would be known as abstract expressionism: it was where Jackson Pollock first showed his groundbreaking all-over drip paintings in 1948, where Barnett Newman had his first solo show in 1950, and where Robert Rauschenberg had his first solo show in 1951. It also represented the just as gigantic Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still. At weekends, in order to cool off from the hustle, Parsons continued to make art. […]