Lynne Drexler

On view in the Titelman Gallery, Vero Beach Museum of Art:

Lynne Drexler, Untitled, ca. 1967. Crayon on paper, 13 ¾ x 7 in. and Lynne Drexler, A Blossom, 1967. Oil on linen, 68 x 49 ¾ in. Private Collection, USA. 

There's no perfect way to assess sales performance at an art fair. Galleries are under no obligation to report sales, and they're incentivised to report strong interest, making their artworks seem more covetable. The success of sales also depends on context. In a down market—which auction sales suggest is already here—average sales look good.

At this year's Armory Show (7–10 September), sales got off to 'a bustling start' according to The Art Newspaper, though they also said some smaller galleries reported 'a slow start'.

New York gallery Berry Campbell had a standout booth, a curated presentation of 12 postwar women artists. The gallery has a distinct focus on re-examining underrepresented women artists of the 20th-century. Gallery owner Christine Berry called it “an incredible day,” noting high demand for artists including Alice Baber, Bernice Bing, and Lynne Drexler.

Works by Drexler sold for $885,000 and $200,000; the artist, who has been drawing intense interest, will likely be the subject of a traveling institutional retrospective at some point in the near future. A work by Baber went for $200,000—Berry Campbell hopes to mount a solo show of the artist next year.

Later on in the day, the gallery let Artnet News know that a painting by Ethel Schwabacher had been sold for $195,000.  

Proving that no force is stronger than girl power, Frampton Co and Berry Campbell present Women Choose Women at Exhibition The Barn.

Lynne Drexler Saw the World Through Kaleidoscope Eyes

The art establishment ignored Lynne Drexler in life and, for more than two decades, also in death. But suddenly, the brilliantly colored canvases she kept piled in her ramshackle Monhegan home are fetching millions. Who was the enigmatic painter, and why is her immense talent only beginning to get its due?

Will Grunewald for Down East, February 2023

These last years have been crucial for readdressing the gender imbalance in art history, unveiling powerful and inspiring stories of female artists. Today’s edition of Artland’s Lost (and Found) Artist series, which unveils the stories of artists who were once omitted from the mainstream art canon or who were largely unseen for most of their careers, explores the renaissance of Abstract Expressionist painter Lynne Mapp Drexler (1928-1999). Probably overshadowed by her husband (also a painter) and her male contemporaries, she experienced the vibrant and tumultuous New York art scene of the mid-20^th century but overwhelmed by it, and struggling with her career, left for the peaceful Monhegan Island, off the coast of Maine. As is often the case, after her death in 1999 and especially in recent years, Drexler is eventually gaining the attention she would have merited, and (as some had anticipated) her paintings are now being sold for millions.

Art Basel’s 2022 edition in Miami Beach closed on Saturday, December 3, 2022, following a week of solid sales across all market sectors and throughout the show. 

The Fair celebrated its landmark 20th-anniversary edition in Miami Beach, signalling two decades of growth and impact by Art Basel as a cultural cornerstone in South Florida, across the Americas, and beyond. The 2022 edition – Art Basel’s largest to date in Miami Beach – brought together 282 premier galleries from 38 countries and territories, including 25 galleries participating in the Fair for the first time and multiple international exhibitors returning to the show after a brief hiatus.

Photo Clayton Calvert © Artlyst 2022

Art Basel continued to draw an attendance of unparalleled global breadth and calibre. Leading private collectors from 88 countries across North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East visited the Fair, as well as museum directors, curators, and high-level patrons from over 150 cultural organizations, including: Art Gallery of Ontario; Aspen Art Museum; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; The Brooklyn Museum, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; Denver Art Museum; Detroit Institute of Arts; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (Malba); Museum of Fine Arts Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; The New Museum, New York; Oklahoma Contemporary; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Serpentine Galleries, London; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate, London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, reinforcing the Fair’s commitment to showcasing exceptional art from the region, nearly two-thirds of this year’s participating galleries had locations in North and South America, with a powerful presence of galleries from the United States, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. The show also featured standout presentations by galleries from Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay, including newcomers Herlitzka + Faria from Barrio Norte, Paulo Kuczynski from São Paulo, and Rolf Art from Buenos Aires.

In celebration of its 20th anniversary, Art Basel launched a Gift-Giving Campaign with a lead donation to the STEAM + program, whose mission is to bring active artists into the seven public schools of the city of Miami Beach. Founded in 2018, the program engages 5,000 children and teenagers every year. It is administered by The Bass Museum of Art, working with many other local institutions, including Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami City Ballet, New World Symphony, The Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU, Young Musicians Unite, and The Wolfsonian-FIU. In addition, UBS, Ruinart, La Prairie, Chateau D’Esclans, Valentino, Knight Foundation, and DRIFT generously support this philanthropic campaign. The fundraiser will run until the end of 2022 when the total sum collected will be announced. 

Lynne Drexler: Nature Sparked
Art Basel Miami Beach
December 1 - 3, 2022

Purchase Tickets
Online Catalogue

Berry Campbell is pleased to present Lynne Drexler: Nature Sparked, a focused exhibition featuring Drexler’s groundbreaking works created between 1959 and 1967. On October 23, 2022, an article by Ted Loos appeared in the New York Times with the heading, “Out of Obscurity Lynne Drexler’s Abstract Paintings Fetch Millions.” The article was published on the occasion of the opening of a joint show of the work of Drexler’s first career phase (1959–1969) at the Mnuchin Gallery on the Upper East Side and Berry Campbell in Chelsea, which represents Drexler’s estate. An Abstract Expressionist painter 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. Never offered before, these paintings reveal the significant contributions she made to post-war abstraction and reveal works alive with an intense physical vibrancy and an incomparable and innovative style.

Even With Seven-Figure Sales, Sanity Prevailed During an Un-Frenzied VIP Preview at Art Basel Miami Beach

Dealers reported strong opening-day sales, but observers noticed collectors were taking the time to think about the works on offer.

Older Female Artists Shine in the ‘Survey” Section
The event’s “Survey” section, which features historical projects by 16 galleries, is particularly strong this year—especially for presentations of work by older female artists, including Lynne Drexler at Berry Campbell, Lois Dodd at Alexandre Gallery, and March Avery—the daughter of the famous American modernist painter Milton Avery—at Switzerland’s Larkin Erdmann gallery.

Erdmann sold out his booth of paintings by March Avery, at prices that ranged from $35,000 to $65,000, telling Artnet News he was “overwhelmed” by the response of collectors. “It is so great that these important paintings are now finally being recognized by collectors and institutions alike,” he said.

Berry Campbell also sold out its “Survey” booth. Prices for Drexler’s paintings ranged from $450,000 to $1.2 million, while her works on paper were priced at $95,000.

Alexandre sold 14 of its 16 Dodd panel paintings, priced between $26,000 to $32,000, along with ten “flashings” (smaller works), priced at $8,700. The buyers were all based in the U.S. “The booth was very busy today, with lots of engaged collectors,” said Phil Alexandre. Continue Reading

Art Basel Miami Beach 2022: Advisory Selections

As we hurtle towards the new year, Art Basel Miami Beach prepares to open its doors to exuberant fairgoers in the East Coast city. This year's edition will be the first since Noah Horowitz was appointed CEO of the fair on 7 November 2022, and with 282 exhibitors—almost double the number of galleries shown in the fair's first edition—he plans to deliver the biggest edition of the fair to date.

Art Basel Miami Beach always presents some outstanding art along with a good dose of art world gossip and glam, but the sheer number of galleries showing means the mass of art on display will most definitely be overwhelming.

Having previewed what the galleries have to offer, to ease the load, we have identified some exceptional works to look out for in advance. Our highlights include work by spearheads of contemporary art Mark Bradford, Nan Goldin, and Sigmar Polke.

Lynne Mapp Drexler at Berry Campbell Gallery
Lynne Mapp Drexler's brightly coloured composition reveals the American artist's mastery of Abstract Expressionist painting. Inspired by her life-long observation of East Coast landscapes, Drexler's remarkable work features a depth of mark-making made from planes of thick impasto rendered in kaleidoscopic colour.

'Drexler's best paintings achieve that quality rarely found in abstraction, by which our initial perceptual reaction begins to slowly unravel, revealing memories wrought from the natural world whilst stirring the inner parts of our subconscious', remarked Ocula Advisor, Rory Mitchell.

Drexler's presentation at Art Basel Miami Beach coincides with the display of her work in the exhibition Lynne Drexler: The First Decade (27 October–22 December 2022) at Mnuchin Gallery and Berry Campbell Gallery in New York.

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In New York and beyond, this month and next yield many wonderful things for the art enthusiasts among us to see. Beginning with the beyond, a new show opening on the West Coast offers a worthy reevaluation of the midcentury art scene, while some blockbuster East Coast events (Alex Katz, Edward Hopper) are already bringing in crowds. 

“Lynne Drexler: The First Decade”

Sprawled across two galleries, “The First Decade” includes oil and gouache paintings made by Drexler between 1959 and 1969. A student of Robert Motherwell and Hans Hofmann, she developed a body of densely colorful, mosaic-like work in New York and, after 1971, on Monhegan Island, Maine, where she died in 1999. Through December 17, 2022, at Berry Campbell and Mnuchin Gallery.

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Female Artists Fight for Equality. It’s Not a Pretty Picture.

On Thursday, Mnuchin Gallery and Berry Campbell Gallery in New York City will both launch shows dedicated to the work of Lynne Drexler, a painter whose trajectory follows a now-familiar narrative when it comes to women artists: though Drexler kicked off her career to much acclaim, even being compared to van Gogh, she languished in obscurity for most of her life.

It took until 2022 for her works to be reevaluated and command impressive auction results—estimated to sell for $40,000 to $60,000 at Christie’s in March, one of her paintings went for around $1.2 million. Drexler can’t enjoy her success, because she died in 1999.

“The art world loves old ladies and young bad boys,” Marilyn Minter, a deeply cool chronicler, in paintings and photographs, of the sensual mundanities of a woman’s life, told The Daily Beast on Tuesday, “and even if they love you, you’re not gonna succeed on the market over the most mediocre white male."

“There’s never, ever been a female artist that has hit the white heat of somebody like Damien Hirst or Julian Schnabel, where they can’t do anything wrong,” Minter said.

Minter was featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, made a film that was displayed in Times Square and has been featured in several solo exhibitions, achieving an impressive level of prestige. Still, the same market restrictions endlessly echo and reverberate, like ripples in an infinite ocean: the most Minter’s work has ever sold for is $269,000.

“I don’t pay attention to the high end of the market because I’m not one of the players, so it’s better for me to not even look at all,” Minter said. “But I’m one of the lucky ones, because I can make a living from my work.”

Earlier in October, contemporary artist Caroline Walker set a new personal auction record at the Frieze London auctions when her painting Indoor Outdoor (2015) sold for $598,081 over an estimate of $67,519–$90,047, Artsy reported last week.

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Lynne Mapp Drexler is the historical artist everyone is talking about now.

Mnuchin Gallery and Berry Campbell Gallery are opening their major exhibition, Lynne Drexler: The First Decade in their respective New York spaces this week, which focuses on work produced between 1959–1969.

This comes hot on the heels of Amy Cappellazzo's Art Intelligence Global group show in Hong Kong, Shatter: Color Field and the Women of Abstract Expressionism (3 October–2 December 2022), which includes three of Drexler's paintings.

Lynne Drexler's tale shares some traits with other women artists of her time, and indeed much of the 20^th century. She moved to New York in 1956, where she studied under Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell, and even showed at the prestigious Tanager Gallery in 1961.

The following year she married the painter John Hultberg, under whose shadow she lived for some time. The couple often spent summers on the remote Monhegan Island in Maine, but eventually separated. Drexler lived alone on Monhegan throughout most of the 1980s—still painting prolifically—up until her death in 1999.

Drexler's estate clearly still holds a great deal of material from the later period, but works from the 1960s are rare and have seen some spectacular auction results recently.

Herbert's Garden (1960) sold for 1.5 million USD at Christie's in May this year, and there is buoyant confidence in these prices continuing to soar given the players involved.

The speed at which things have moved, and the clear strategy in place to create the market from next to nothing, has drawn skepticism from some quarters—but I would argue that Drexler's paintings from this period point towards something exceptional.

There is no doubt that the Virginia-born artist stands up to some of the great abstract painters of the postwar period. Not unlike Joan Mitchell, there is a subtle yet clear debt to artists such as Monet, Derain, and Bonnard, as well as the Pointillists. Drexler's mark-making also draws parallels with the style of her better-known contemporary, Alma Thomas, who was actually the subject of Mnuchin's major exhibition in 2019.

Drexler's paintings exude the atmosphere of the East Coast landscapes, which she inhabited throughout much of her life in Maine.

Her rich tones are beautifully composed in subtly differing shades, with each brushstroke varying in direction. Combined with variations in the thickness of impasto and the size of marks, Drexler's resulting compositions possess a layered depth, and still are able to breathe with precisely articulated areas of negative space.

Drexler's best paintings achieve that quality rarely found in abstraction, by which our initial perceptual reaction begins to slowly unravel, revealing memories wrought from the natural world whilst stirring the inner parts of our subconscious. Nature is prevalent in her works, but there is something else unknown and magical that renders Drexler's paintings remarkable.

After a derailed career, Ms. Drexler became a “hermit” painter on an island. Decades later, piqued public interest can earn her work seven figures.

When two paintings sold for far higher than their estimates at auction last spring, by an artist very few people had ever heard of, a signal pierced the art market: The artist, Lynne Drexler, might merit more attention today than she ever received in her lifetime.

Both works are mosaiclike fields of bright colors. “Flowered Hundred” (1962) was estimated to sell at Christie’s New York for $40,000 to $60,000. It sold for just under $1.2 million in March.

The iron was hot; a couple of months later, some 20 buyers scrambled for “Herbert’s Garden” (1960) when it came up for auction for $70,000 to $100,000. It sold for $1.5 million.

Ms. Drexler (1928-99) began with a promising career in the New York art scene — one reviewer compared her work to van Gogh’s — but she spent the last decades of her life as a self-described “hermit” on Monhegan Island, a remote spot off the coast of Maine. At one point, she was painting seascapes for tourists to make ends meet.

“I knew there would come a time when this would happen,” said Michael Rancourt, the owner of Ms. Drexler’s estate. “But I didn’t know what the extent would be.”

Two New York galleries are working together to mount a joint exhibition that opens this week: “Lynne Drexler: The First Decade” is the first solo show of Ms. Drexler’s work in the city in 38 years.

The show, running Oct. 27 to Dec. 17, is a mix of works that are for sale and those only on loan; some in each category are from the estate. Mnuchin Gallery, on the Upper East Side, will concentrate on the period from 1959 to 1964 with works that include “Rose Nocturne” (1962), dominated by pink shades.

Berry Campbell, which represents the artist’s estate, will show works at its Chelsea gallery that were made from 1965 to 1969. They will include “Smoked Green” (1967), a piece that shows her abstract work moving toward more defined blocks of color, a direction that picked up speed over time.

Ms. Drexler’s work is back at auction this fall, too, with “Tropical Calm” (1963) going on the block Nov. 18 at Christie’s, estimated at $60,000 to $80,000.

“It feels like a true rediscovery,” Sukanya Rajaratnam, a partner at Mnuchin, said of the artist’s renaissance. “Sometimes there are artists who are hiding in plain sight.” She noted that it was relatively unusual for a backward glance to produce such interest today. “Not every forgotten artist deserves to have their story told,” she said.

Among those who do merit it, “there’s a resurgence of women artists right now,” said Christine Berry, Berry Campbell’s co-founder, noting that women and overlooked artists from the mid-20th century were the focus of her and Martha Campbell’s gallery.

“We’re all interested in being more inclusive about who we add to the canon,” Ms. Berry added.

In the case of Ms. Drexler, a reputational rescue by the marketplace has an irony at its heart. “She hated the art world,” said Tralice Bracy, formerly a curator at the Monhegan Museum in Maine who organized a show of Ms. Drexler’s work there in 2008.

That enmity stemmed from having a promising career derailed. Ms. Bracy, a former Monhegan resident who got to know Ms. Drexler in the last years of her life, met her around 1994 when a friend said, “‘You should meet this artist, she’ll be in the books someday,’” Ms. Bracy recalled.

Ms. Drexler’s experiences were reflected in the paintings and enriched them, she added. “When you look at her life’s work, you see the humanity,” Ms. Bracy said. “They are lyrical, joyful, intense paintings. And then her life gets more complicated.”

Raised near Newport News, Va., Ms. Drexler received a fine arts degree from the Richmond Professional Institute and later went to New York to study separately with two influential painters of the age: Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell. Though unknown at the time, she was in the thick of the action among downtown artists.

“She mingled at Cedar Tavern,” Ms. Rajaratnam said, referring to the watering hole of Jackson Pollock and other avant-garde artists.

After much painting and networking, she got her first solo show in 1961 at the prestigious Tanager Gallery, a co-op whose members included Willem de Kooning and Alex Katz. But she did not sell any of the works. That year she met a fellow painter, John Hultberg (1925-2005), whom she married in the spring of 1962, beginning a tumultuous relationship with that better-known artist.

When Mr. Hultberg’s dealer, Martha Jackson, helped him buy a house on Monhegan Island, 12 miles off the coast of Maine — partly as a respite from the art world and the heavy drinking he was struggling with — it became a getaway place for the couple, and later their full-time home.

As the two moved around the country, teaching and showing their work, Ms. Drexler had some sales and good reviews. They settled back in New York in 1967.

“Sure, she was overshadowed by her male contemporaries — that’s how this story goes,” said Sara Friedlander, the deputy chair of postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s, who worked on the spring sales that brought big prices for Ms. Drexler’s work. “But I want to complicate this idea that she was overlooked. She had some commercial success as an artist, and how many people can say that?”

Health problems, Mr. Hultberg’s alcoholism and a changing art world frayed the couple’s relationship, and they moved to Monhegan full time in the early 1980s, separating soon after.

“Life was falling apart,” Ms. Bracy said. “They couldn’t afford the city anymore. They were kind of exhausted.”

But Ms. Drexler never stopped painting.

“She couldn’t get solid gallery representation, but she made art every day and persevered,” Ms. Berry said.

When Ms. Drexler died in 1999, stacks of paintings were found in her house. Mr. Rancourt said that the estate included many paintings and works on paper from the 1950s to the 1990s. “She was an avid painter,” he said. “There are enough works to keep me busy for the rest of my career.”

The early abstract works seem to be gaining more interest in the marketplace, he added, “but she got better as she went along.”

In the 1990s, when Ms. Drexler was living on her own as a full-time resident of Monhegan, her work followed a course that had begun in the previous decade, more clearly depicting real things — landscapes, tabletop items — in a highly stylized way.

“She produced a late group of upbeat representational pictures in warm palettes that manage to transcend their ordinary subject matter and morph into quite captivating compositions,” wrote the art historian Gail Levin in the catalog for “Lynne Drexler: The First Decade.”

Ms. Bracy said she thought she knew how Ms. Drexler would feel about being appreciated anew: “She would be giddy.”

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 

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. 

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.

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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