Rosalyn Drexler, an artist and writer who moved between visual art, literature, theater, and even professional wrestling, died on September 3rd at her home in New York. She was 98. Garth Greenan Gallery, which represents the artist, announced her death, though no cause was specified.
Drexler’s death came amid a period of renewed recognition, marked by a 2016 retrospective at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University that traveled to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. Once regarded as an overlooked figure, she is now recognized as a key voice in Pop art, known for her vividly colored paintings that often centered on cinematic depictions of violence or gender.
Born in New York in 1937, Drexler briefly attended Hunter College before marrying painter Sherman Drexler and relocating to Berkeley, California. There, she exhibited assemblages made from discarded materials before returning to New York in 1951. Around this time, she embarked on a short-lived career as a professional wrestler, performing under the stage name Rosa Carlo, the Mexican Spitfire.
By the early ’60s, Drexler immersed herself in the Pop art movement in New York. Her work sourced imagery from tabloids and magazines, rendered in bold colors, similarly to her contemporaries Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. She often referenced Hollywood actors, like Marilyn Monroe, and famous advertisements, which she sometimes painted over. Many of her works also referenced film movements, from 1940s American Film Noir and the French Nouvelle Vague.
Her early exhibitions took place at Reuben Gallery in 1960 and Kornblee Gallery in 1964, 1965, and 1966. However, her work remained outside of the limelight for decades. Garth Greenan Gallery has mounted four solo shows in the last decade. The most recent, from 2023, focused on her early works: found-object sculptures, collages, and erotic ink drawings. In recent years, Drexler’s paintings were included in a number of survey and retrospective exhibitions, and her works entered major collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Drexler was a prolific writer. She published nine novels throughout her life, including To Smithereens in 1972. This novel was reissued in 2025 to critical acclaim. She also wrote 10 plays and four screenplay novelizations, among them Rocky, under the pseudonym Julia Sorel. Her plays earned three Obie Awards, and she shared an Emmy Award for co-writing Lily Tomlin’s 1973 television special “Lily” with Richard Pryor.
