Rosalyn Drexler, Indefatigable Painter Who Wrestled Her Method into the Pop Canon, Dies at 98

Rosalyn Drexler, whose work of the Nineteen Sixties about Hollywood actors, on-screen violence, and gender subversion have in recent times gained widespread reward, died in New York on Wednesday at 98. A spokesperson for New York’s Garth Greenan Gallery, which represents her, confirmed her loss of life however didn’t state a trigger.

Drexler is right now considered one of many key artists related to the Pop artwork motion of the Nineteen Sixties, although she was for a few years thought-about an obscure determine. Alongside the colourful work she produced, she additionally wrote novels, one among which—her 1972 ebook To Smithereens—was republished this yr to important acclaim. Previous to changing into an artist, she additionally briefly had a profession as an expert wrestler.

Her ’60s work share affinities with a number of the most well-known works of the Pop period. Like Andy Warhol and James Rosenquist, she painted Marilyn Monroe and different actors who appeared frequently within the films. Like Roy Lichtenstein, she displayed a zest for industrial imagery and the brilliant hues of promoting. Like Marisol, she appeared to specific a priority for a way the media inspired violence upon ladies.

Drexler steadily labored with ready-made footage, making use of her paint instantly onto her photographs, whose material was instantly recognizable. However in portray away the context that when accompanied these footage and surrounding them in fields of blazing coloration, she defamiliarized these footage.

In his evaluation of Drexler’s 2016 survey at Brandeis College’s Rose Artwork Museum, critic Raphael Rubenstein wrote in Artwork in America, “She turns up the retinal quantity repeatedly within the grounds of her work—huge seas of cerulean blue edged by crisp white strains, or enveloping acts of home violence; equally riveting cadmium reds, oranges, and crimsons saturating the image aircraft beneath offended gorillas, dancing Chubby Checkers, and kissing lovers; Day-Glo yellows that push up towards sharp blacks as ‘dangerous guys’ in black fits level weapons and stroll up and down staircases—and employs uncommon compositional methods to attract our consideration to those expanses of high-key coloration.”

Throughout the period by which they have been made, these work weren’t handled as nice works. “I don’t assume my work have been seen a lot again within the Nineteen Sixties,” Drexler advised Artforum in 2016. “It was the time for Summary Expressionism and Minimalism; Pop was simply starting to rear its big, glittering head. My work was a secret type of factor.”

Now not are her work so secret. Following the Rose Artwork Museum present, her works have been collected broadly amongst US establishments, with the Museum of Trendy Artwork, the Buffalo AKG Artwork Museum, and the Whitney Museum amongst these to accumulate their first Drexler work inside the previous decade.

Rosalyn Drexler was born Rosalyn Bronznick in 1937 in New York. Her dad and mom, each of whom have been Jewish, have been immigrants from Russia who introduced her to performing arts occasions. However she expressed little need to change into an artist when she was a baby. “I all the time needed to be a author, even once I was a child,” she advised the Brooklyn Rail.

Nonetheless, she was drawn to the coloring books her mom bought for her and to the creations of a buddy who drew outlines round objects in footage she discovered. Reproductions additionally performed an essential function in Drexler’s inventive training.

“We have been poor,” Drexler advised the artist Elaine de Kooning in a 1971 ARTnews interview. “It was across the time of the Melancholy. We owned no artwork, no books. However a newspaper supplied for a couple of cents, and a coupon, reproductions of well-known work. My mom despatched for a Turner seascape, a Rembrandt self-portrait and a Vermeer. This was the primary nice artwork I had ever seen.”

Drexler attended Hunter Faculty, however she remained there for only one yr. She then married Sherman Drexler and moved to Berkeley, California. There, the couple confirmed their artwork alongside one another, with Rosalyn exhibiting assemblages produced from what she described as “junk from the road” in an Artnet Information profile.

They moved again to New York in 1951, and Drexler briefly took up wrestling below the moniker Rosa Carlo the Mexican Spitfire, a reputation she selected after flipping by the cellphone ebook. “I educated in a lodge room by hitting a pillow,” she advised the Rail. “Within the ring abruptly, I might have damaged my again, I used to be tossed throughout the ring. Fell accurately although, which was good. I discovered easy methods to fall. I used to be the newborn face, as a result of the newborn face takes all of the punishment till the nice retaliation.” (A lot in a while, Warhol would make silkscreen prints by which Drexler poses as her wrestling persona.)

Having toured the US as a wrestler for 3 months, Drexler returned to creating her sculptures, although she gained little recognition for them. Optimistic remarks from the sculptor David Smith moved her to proceed on. “He stated, ‘Don’t surrender sculpture; I’ve identified ladies sculptors they usually cease; don’t cease,’” Drexler recalled within the 1971 ARTnews interview. “I really feel type of responsible now as a result of I turned to portray and writing.”

She ended up having an illustrious writing profession, penning 10 performs and 9 novels. These performs and novels contained the identical quirkiness as her work: one ebook centered round a speaking canine; one other, round a fictionalized model of Rocky, the titular hero of the sports activities film franchise. Her writing tended to have a biographical ingredient. To Smithereens, her just lately republished 1972 novel, was concerning the New York artwork scene, and even concerned a girl named Rosa who’s moved to change into an expert wrestler.

However in contrast to many beloved painters of the Nineteen Sixties, Drexler’s inventive alternatives remained restricted. She by no means operated a studio, and she or he took jobs exterior the artwork world. Her Artnet profile listed off stints as a masseuse and a home cleaner, a waitress and a professor.

Because the historical past of Pop has been reappraised, so too has Drexler’s oeuvre. She appeared within the 2015 Tate Trendy exhibition “The World Goes Pop,” which dramatically expanded the motion’s canon. Earlier this summer time, the New York Occasions named the republished model of To Smithereens among the finest books of 2025 to this point.

In interviews, Drexler appeared shocked by the reward she acquired throughout the later a part of her profession. “I do know it’s all success, however when it comes this late in life, you miss the individuals you may share it with,” Drexler advised Artnet. “It’s onerous to consider how quietly time actually passes.”