Betty Parsons is best known for her pivotal role as an art dealer who championed modern art from the 1940s until her death in 1982. While her roster of artists is long and impressive, including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Robert Rauschenberg, Hans Hofmann and many others, Parsons always thought of herself first as an artist. She was inspired by the modern art she saw at the legendary Armory Show, the 1913 exhibition that introduced modern art to America, and decided, at the age of 13, on a career as a sculptor. In the 1920s, she lived in Paris, taking art classes at la Grande Chaumière and studying sculpture with Emile-Antoine Bourdelle, whom she had most admired at the Armory Show, Alexander Archipenko and Ossip Zadkine. Her earliest paintings were realist landscapes and portraits, but in 1947, in trying to depict the color, noise, and excitement of a visit to the rodeo, she turned to abstraction. Her works, executed in response to her environment, are exuberant and whimsical, with colorful shapes that float across broad areas of flat color.