Betty Parsons

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Betty Parsons (1977)

Betty Parsons (born January 31, 1900 as Betty Bierne Pierson , † July 23, 1982 in New York City ) was a New York artist and gallery owner who was known as the "mother of Abstract Expressionism" because of her early support for the Abstract Expressionists . She represented the artists Jackson Pollock , Mark Rothko , Clyfford Still , Barnett Newman , Hans Hofmann and Ad Reinhardt .

Life

Grown up as the second daughter of three in a wealthy - in her own words: “very American” - family, she attended Miss Chapin's school for girls in New York for five years from the age of ten . In 1913 she attended the legendary Armory Show , which inspired her later life. "It was exciting, full of color and life. I felt like those paintings. I couldn't explain it, but I decided then that this was the world I wanted ... art." Against her parents' wishes, she began studying art in the studio of Gutzon Borglum , the infamous creator of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial .

On May 8, 1920, she married Schyler Livingston Parsons in Heavenly Rest Church in New York. On the nine-month honeymoon through Europe, she met her husband as a possessive and jealous ("possessive and jealous") character. By mutual agreement, the couple divorced in Paris in 1923.

Then she studied painting in Paris. She enrolled in the “ Académie de la Grande Chaumière ” and had Antoine Bourdelle , Alexander Archipenko and Ossip Zadkine as teachers. One of her classmates was Alberto Giacometti . Her friends included Man Ray and Alexander Calder, as well as some of the expatriate lesbian Parisian community, notably Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach .

After losing her money in the " Great Depression " in 1929, she returned to the USA in 1933 and worked temporarily as an art teacher in California. In 1935 she went to New York, where the "Midtown Galleries" showed an exhibition of her paintings.

Betty Parsons as an artist

She remained true to her life as an artist, which preceded her career as a gallery owner, until her death in 1982. In an interview with Art in America magazine in 1977, she said: “When I'm not at the gallery, my own art is my relaxation. That's my greatest joy. "

In 1933, her first professional exhibition of her watercolors and sculptures was shown in the Galerie des Quatre Chemins in Paris.

Betty Parsons Gallery

She worked as a clerk and director of various galleries (Midtown, Sullivan, Wakefield Bookshop, Mortimer Brandt) before opening her own gallery on Manhattan 57th Street in 1946 with the help of four supporters who each contributed $ 1,000. After Peggy Guggenheim closed her museum gallery " Art of This Century " in 1947 because of her return to Europe, she took over the abstract expressionists. Due to their close ties to the intellectual art scene in New York (gallery owners, art critics, curators), the painters she represented were given a platform that brought them recognition and their first fame. However, when Rothko, Newman, Pollock and Still suggested in 1951 that she should concentrate on their representation and marketing, she declined with the words: “I like a bigger garden”. Gradually, the abstract expressionists then left their gallery and signed contracts with more market-oriented galleries such as those of Sam Kootz and Sidney Janis .

Afterwards she offered her first solo exhibitions in New York to many contemporary artists - including Robert Rauschenberg , Agnes Martin , Richard Tuttle and Ellsworth Kelly . The gallery was closed in 1982 after her death.

Own works

  • Betty Parsons: paintings, gouaches and sculpture 1955-68 . [catalog of an exhibition at] Whitechapel Gallery, London, November-December 1968
  • Betty Parsons retrospective: an exhibition of paintings and sculpture . [catalog] Montclair, NJ: Montclair Art Museum, 1974

Solo exhibitions of his own works

  • Galerie des Quatre Chemeis, Paris, 1933
  • Stendhal Gallery, Los Angeles, 1934
  • Midtown Galleries. New York City, 10 exhibitions, 1936–1957
  • University Gallery of Minnesota, 1937

...

  • Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1968
  • Sachs Gallery, Ne Cork City, 1972
  • The Montclair Art Museum, 1974

literature

  • Marcia Bystryn: Art Galleries as Gatekeepers: The Case of the Abstract Expressionists . In: Social Research , Jg. 45/1978, pp. 390-408
  • Lee Hall: Betty Parsons: artist, dealer, collector . Harry N Abrams, New York 1991, ISBN 0810937123 .
  • Lisa N Peters: Journeys: the Art of Betty Parsons. Spanierman Modern (Gallery), New York 2010

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Web archive: Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery
  2. ↑ American National Biography Online: Parsons, Betty [1]
  3. ↑ Lee Hall: Betty Parsons: artist, dealer, collector . Harry N Abrams, New York 1991, p. 28.
  4. ↑ Lee Hall: Betty Parsons: artist, dealer, collector . Harry N Abrams, New York 1991, p. 29.
  5. ↑ Lee Hall: Betty Parsons: artist, dealer, collector . Harry N Abrams, New York 1991, p. 31.
  6. ↑ Betty Parsons Biography ( Memento of the original from June 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.spaniermanmodern.com
  7. ^ Betty Parsons in Paris. [2]
  8. ↑ Pioneering Gallerist Betty Parsons Was Also an Important Artist [3]
  9. ↑ Pioneering Gallerist Betty Parsons Was Also an Important Artist [4]
  10. ↑ Lee Hall: Betty Parsons: artist, dealer, collector . Harry N Abrams, New York 1991, p. 51.
  11. ^ Marcia Bystryn: Art Galleries as Gatekeepers: The Case of the Abstract Expressionists . In: Social Research , Jg. 45/1978, p. 395.
  12. ^ Marcia Bystryn: Art Galleries as Gatekeepers: The Case of the Abstract Expressionists . In: Social Research , Jg. 45/1978, p. 400.
  13. ↑ Betty Parsons Biography ( Memento of the original from June 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.spaniermanmodern.com
  14. ↑ Lee Hall: Betty Parson: artist, dealer, collector . Harry N Abrams, New York 1991, p. 181.
personal data
SURNAME Parsons, Betty
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bierne Pierson, Betty (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American gallery owner and painter
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1900
DATE OF DEATH July 23, 1982
Place of death New York City