Lynne Drexler

At First Light: Two Centuries of Artists in Maine
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine
June 25 - November 6, 2022
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View Works by Lynne Drexler 

Lynne Drexler (1928-99), a second-generation American abstract painter, began to attract market attention this year when Christie’s made her auction record of $1.2mn for a 1962 painting sold by the Farnsworth Art Museum in Maine. The work had been estimated at $40,000-$60,000, already a toppy level for a painter whose work had not sold publicly for more than $10,000 before 2020, according to Artnet.

Now two New York galleries are collaborating on a show to cement Drexler’s re-emergence. Berry Campbell, which began representing the estate this year, has joined forces with the big-league Mnuchin Gallery to show 10 years of Drexler’s early work. The Upper East Side’s Mnuchin Gallery will show works from 1959 to 1964, while Berry Campbell in Chelsea takes the following five years.

Drexler was taught by Robert Motherwell and produced dense, colourful paintings during what the galleries are calling her “first decade”. Married to a then more acknowledged artist, John Hultberg, and latterly reclusive, Drexler’s relative obscurity was the same old story, says Sukanya Rajaratnam, partner at Mnuchin. “It’s hard to imagine that Lee Krasner [married to Jackson Pollock] was overlooked for so long, but she was,” Rajaratnam says. Drexler “holds her own, and not only among female artists”. Both exhibitions run from October 27 to December 17 with works priced between $500,000 and $2.5mn.

Berry Campbell Gallery announces Lynne Drexler: The First Decade––a landmark exhibition presented in collaboration with Mnuchin Gallery, which will survey the seminal paintings Lynne Drexler (1928-1999) created between 1959-1969. A second-generation Abstract Expressionist and student of both Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell, Drexler established a distinctive stylistic idiom through vibrantly contrasting hues, applied in swatch-like patches with a Pointillist dynamism. Mnuchin Gallery will feature works produced between 1959-1964, while Berry Campbell will feature those between 1965-1969. This chronological presentation aims to highlight Drexler’s significant contributions to post-war American abstraction in demonstrating the innovative and signature style she honed over this pivotal decade in her career spent primarily in New York. On view from October 27 - December 17, 2022, Lynne Drexler: The First Decade will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue authored by Gail Levin, with contributions by Lois Dodd and Jamie Wyeth.  We are grateful for Art Intelligence Global’s participation in this collaborative venture.

Berry Campbell is located at 524 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m, or by appointment.

Mnuchin Gallery is located at 45 East 78th Street, New York, NY 10075. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m, or by appointment. 

Farnsworth Forward: The Collection
Curated by Suzette McAvoy
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine
Through December 31, 2022

Featuring work by Stephen Pace, Lynne Mapp Drexler, George Bellows, Lois Dodd, Winslow Homer, Daniel Minter, and Marguerite Zorach.

View Works by Stephen Pace
Lynne Mapp Drexler: Solo Exhibition Forthcoming at Berry Campbell, New York

Drexler sold art to tourists for $50. Earlier this month, one of her paintings fetched over $1 million at Christie's.

What is going on there?

That’s the question market observers asked after a vibrant abstract canvas painted six decades ago by little-known artist Lynne Drexler soared to $1.2 million at a Christie’s off-season auction last month. More than 16 bidders propelled the work to 12 times its presale estimate of $40,000 to $60,000. 

The price was mind-boggling for an artist who lived most of her life in obscurity, overshadowed, like many women of her generation, by a husband. She never had much of a career, showing here and there but rarely in New York City, whose hustle and bustle she eventually traded for the austere beauty of Monhegan, a small, rocky island off the coast of Maine. 

There, amid harsh winters and touristy summers, Drexler spent her last 16 years painting daily, listening to the opera on the radio, and holding court at Jack Daniels-fueled salons. In the process, she filled her rickety white house with countless canvases. Her most inventive body of work—ecstatic abstracts created from torrents of vibrant brushstrokes, small and precise—was only discovered after her death, in 1999.

A second-generation Abstract Expressionist, Drexler’s star is rising as the contribution of female artists is being written back into the mainstream canon of art history (and the art market). The past few years have seen new records for Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Alma Thomas, and Helen Frankenthaler, as well as Yayoi Kusama and Agnes Martin. 

Drexler’s posthumous rise serves as a riposte to the idea that there are no more artists left to “rediscover.” Those who knew her just wish she could have been here to see it.

Before 2020, none of Drexler’s paintings had sold at auction for $10,000, let alone $1 million. 

Something started to change that year, when a 1966 green painting fetched a quadruple-estimate $26,000 at Barridoff Auction in Portland, Maine. Since then, her work has consistently fetched five- and six-figure sums; most recently, $150,000 for PinKing 1970 at Barridoff on March 19. One of her paintings is now in the collection of John Legend and Chrissy Teigen.

“These women of the 20th century, who are related to the second movement of Abstract Expressionism, were so undervalued and under-circulated that it almost became a tempest when they started to be recognized,” said Michael Rancourt, who manages the Drexler estate, who has never before spoken to the press. Along with figures like Grace Hartigan and Yvonne Thomas, “Lynne is fortunate to be part of it.”

The record-setting Christie’s painting, Flowered Hundred (1962), was deaccessioned by the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. “It’s terrific that she’s finally getting her due,” said Christopher Brownawell, the museum’s director. 

Drexler was born in 1928 in Newport News, Virginia and remained a Southern lady until her death. “She could curse like a pirate, but she judged people by their manners,’’ a friend recalled in a catalogue essay.

After attending the College of William and Mary, she came to New York in the 1950s to study with Robert Motherwell at Hunter College. She also took studio art classes with Hans Hofmann. She lived in the Chelsea Hotel and shared her downtown studio with painter Seymour Boardman. 

In the early 1960s, she married fellow artist John Hultberg, whose large-scale Surrealist compositions won him the support of legendary gallerist Martha Jackson. She placed his works in top museums, paid for his (and Drexler’s) art supplies, and bought him a house on Monhegan Island, according to curator Tralice Bracy. 

Jackson wasn’t particularly interested in Drexler’s work. “She wasn’t acknowledged as a painter, certainly not as a great painter,” Rancourt said. “She was the child in the corner, basically.”  

Anita Shapolsky, a veteran New York art dealer, met Drexler while visiting Hultberg on the island in the early 1980s. She was unaware of Drexler’s Ab Ex phase. “She was a little angry at life,” Shapolsky recalled. “There were marital problems. At the time she was doing small paper pictures of nature for the tourists who came to the island.” Continue Reading

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