Betty Jean Sabo, Southwest Painter

Betty Jean Sabo was one of Albuquerque's most famous contemporary artists. She was also a student of Carl Von Hassler, probably in the early years of her career. She was best known as a painter until later in her career at which time she switched her modality to bronze sculpture.

She studied art at University of New Mexico in the late 1940s and was a renowned painter before she began to create the signature bronzes in her mid-60s. The Albuquerque Museum commissioned one of her first bronze pieces; the 1995 bronze "Julia Resting," of a woman seated on a bench outside the museum's front doors. She also sculpted the Albuquerque Botanical Garden work featuring Clyde and Carrie Tingley, neighbors of Sabo's when she was a child. Clyde Tingley was an early Governor of New Mexico.

Paintings by Betty Jean Sabo (1928-2016) are relatively rare as those who knew her when she was a painter have tended to have kept those they purchased. It has been several years since she painted, so there are no recent paintings for collectors to purchase.

Betty Jean Beals, became Betty Jean Angelos when she first married, then Betty Jean Sabo when she married Dan Sabo who became her life partner.  Her earlier paintings were signed simply Angelos, and her later paintings were signed Sabo.  

TAGS: Albuquerque, Carl Von Hassler, sculpture, bronze, Paintings