A groundbreaking retrospective of Betty Parsons, the legendary American art dealer who launched the careers of abstract expressionist masters like Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, is now on display at the De La Warr Pavilion in Sussex, England. The exhibition, titled "Betty Parsons: Sheer Energy," marks the first European retrospective of the influential gallerist who chose to follow her artistic vision rather than bow to commercial pressures from some of the most famous artists of the 20th century.
In 1951, Parsons faced a career-defining ultimatum from a group of rising abstract expressionist stars she represented, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and Clyfford Still. These artists demanded that she drop her wider roster and focus exclusively on promoting their careers, threatening to leave if she refused. Parsons' response was characteristically independent: "Sorry, I have to follow my own lights – no." This decision would define both her career as a gallerist and her commitment to her own artistic practice.
Those "lights" led Parsons to open her progressive gallery in midtown Manhattan in 1946, which became a crucial launchpad for the New York avant-garde movement. While she spent weekdays in the city nurturing other artists' careers, Parsons would retreat to her seaside studio in Southold, Long Island, where she produced hundreds of distinctive paintings and driftwood sculptures over 50 years. The coastal setting of the current exhibition feels particularly appropriate, as her art is displayed across both floors of the concrete pavilion overlooking the sea.
The exhibition spans Parsons' artistic journey from the 1930s until the year before her death in 1982. Like many of her contemporaries, she was drawn to Paris in her early career, living and studying there for a decade before returning to New York in 1933. Her early work consisted of fleeting landscapes influenced by summer watercolor classes in southern France, but she gradually transitioned from watercolors to gouache, acrylic, and oil as she dedicated herself to abstraction.
This artistic evolution is clearly visible in works like "Bahamas" (1950), a vibrant painting on paper that marks a bold departure from her earlier, softer rendered scenes. The piece depicts two figures on a beach, possibly reading, with sand rendered in coarse strokes of pink and yellow, and shades of blue suggesting sea and sky. The bathers are outlined in tomato-red, which could represent towels or sunburn, making this one of the last works to contain obvious figurative elements.
The majority of the chronologically organized exhibition showcases Parsons' deliciously abstract work, enriched by her adventurous travels to Africa and the Caribbean. Her palette became increasingly vivid, featuring patches of cerulean, fuchsia, orange, and mint. The scale of her works varies dramatically – some paintings are the size of a paperback book, drawing viewers in for intimate examination, while others rival the vast canvases of the ascendant male artists she represented in the city. This range creates both a sense of respect and intimacy with her work.
Many pieces remain untitled, inviting viewers to interpret swiftly daubed shapes, swatches of saturated color, and lines scribbled into still-wet paint with brush ends. When titles are provided, they offer intriguing hints of meaning. "Eyes and Garden II" (1956) features pink and blue splotches floating on a moss-green background, while "Summer Fire" (1959) blazes with pinkish-red tones. "Hortons Point" (1968) evokes the lighthouse built in Southold in 1857 through strips of red, orange, and blue.
Parsons entered her most productive period in 1960 when she moved into a waterfront house-studio designed by artist Tony Smith, located near the Hortons Point lighthouse. The influence of her shoreline environment is evident in works like "Reef Life" (1975), which features painterly suggestions of fish and sea creatures wrapped in a sea-blue border, and "Under Sea" (1975), where the darkness of the ocean floor lurks between wavy strips suggesting seaweed.
The exhibition's upper floor showcases the playful sculptural work Parsons began creating in 1965, fashioned from driftwood and other materials found on the beach. These wonderfully weird statues appear in archival photographs arranged on the sand as if they had just scuttled crab-like from the waves. Up close, the wonky wood scraps, stacked and striped with pigment, show their weathered origins, with nails jutting out at jaunty angles to hold the pieces together. Some sculptures anchor viewers in Long Island or places she visited abroad, while others vaguely resemble boats and buildings.
As a queer woman operating in a male-dominated art world, Parsons was groundbreaking in her approach to gallery representation. She was among the first New York gallerists to represent women, queer artists, and people of color, following her intuition to show new work that was considered far-out and supporting individuals who were diverse or overlooked. This same streak of originality runs through her personal artwork, from the offbeat paintings to the fun and fresh sculptures created from materials that had either washed up on the beach in front of her light-filled studio or been discarded by local carpenters and architects.
The question remains whether those "giants" – as she dubbed the successful artists who gave her the ultimatum – would have preferred that she set aside not only her diverse client roster but also her own artistic practice to concentrate solely on selling their work. Perhaps they would have, but it wouldn't have made a difference to Parsons, who once said in an interview, "When I'm painting in my studio – I forget the gallery entirely." This commitment to her own artistic vision, even at the cost of representing some of the most commercially successful artists of her era, ultimately defines both her legacy and the spirit captured in this remarkable exhibition, which runs at De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea until January 18.
