Biography
Rosalyn Drexler (1926–2025) was an artist born in the Bronx, New York.
Part of the original generation of American Pop artists, Drexler began using commercial imagery in her paintings in 1961—the same year as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. In her work, Drexler appropriated images from magazines, newspapers, and movie posters, weaving together the prosaic and the iconic. She painted over her collaged images with bright pigments, eliminating the visual trace of the underlying, mechanically reproduced source material.
Graphically intense and thematically dark, Drexler’s artworks channel the sinister undercurrents of American life, summoning themes of sexuality, fame, and violence. In her work, she presented a farrago of tabloids, history, and social issues presented in the vernacular of American 1940s Film Noir and French Nouvelle Vague. Her paintings depicted infinite admixtures of brutality, desire, pathos, power, desolation and playfulness, reflecting her Shakespearian taste for the variety and range of human qualities. Drexler’s imagery was complex and more difficult to immediately recall than that of her contemporaries: her paintings are iconic in incident as well as image.
In addition to her work as a visual artist, Drexler was also an accomplished novelist and playwright. She published her first play in 1963 and her first novel in 1965. She was the recipient of three Obie Awards, as well as an Emmy Award for her work on Lily Tomlin’s television special Lily (co-written with Richard Pryor).
Notable exhibitions include: Reuben Gallery (1960, New York), Kornblee Gallery (1964, 1965, 1966, New York), Grey Art Gallery, (1986, New York) Pace Gallery (2007, New York), and Garth Greenan Gallery (2015, 2017, 2019, 2023, New York). A survey exhibition, Rosalyn Drexler and the Ends of Man, took place in 2006 at Rutgers University’s Paul Robeson Gallery (Newark, New Jersey). A retrospective exhibition, Rosalyn Drexler: Who Does She Think She Is?, took place at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University (2016, Waltham, Massachusetts); it traveled to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in October 2016 and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in February 2017.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Drexler’s paintings were featured in many important museum exhibitions, such as Pop Art USA (1963, Oakland Art Museum, California), The Painter and the Photograph (1964, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University), American Pop Art (1974, Whitney Museum of American Art), and Another Aspect of Pop Art, (1978, P.S. 1, Institute for Art and Urban Resources). Since 2010, her work figured prominently in Sid Sachs’ landmark exhibition Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968 (2010, University of the Arts), Power Up: Female Pop Art (2010 Kunsthalle Wien), Pop to Popism (2014, Australia’s Art Gallery of New South Wales), International Pop, (2015–2016, Walker Art Center, Dallas Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art), and Human Interest, (2016–2017, Whitney Museum of American Art).
Drexler’s paintings are in the collections of many museums, including: the Albright-Knox Art Gallery; the Allen Memorial Art Gallery, Oberlin College; the Colby College Museum of Art; Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida; the Grey Art Gallery, New York University; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University; the Wadsworth Athenaeum; the Walker Art Center; and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Exhibitions
Press
October 16, 2026
Rosalyn Drexler featured in The New Yorker
October 15, 2026
Rosalyn Drexler: My Life Has a Life of Its Own featured in The New York Times
September 16, 2026
Rosalyn Drexler: My Life Has a Life of Its Own Featured in Cultured (opens in new tab)
September 11, 2026
Rosalyn Drexler: My Life Has a Life of Its Own Reviewed in ARTnews
September 1, 2026
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in Vogue
March 11, 2026
Garth Greenan Gallery to Move to Two New Spaces in SoHo this September
September 3, 2025
In Memoriam: Rosalyn Drexler
May 20, 2025
Rosalyn Drexler’s “To Smithereens” Reviewed in the New York Times
March 24, 2023
Rosalyn Drexler Reviewed in The New York Times
December 7, 2022
Rosalyn Drexler, Cannupa Hanska Luger, and Howardena Pindell Featured in NYT‘s Best Art of 2022
March 26, 2021
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in Artsy
January 1, 2021
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in Orange Crush
December 5, 2019
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in TWM
July 15, 2019
“36 Works on Paper” Featured in Artnews (opens in new tab)
March 23, 2019
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in The Village Voice
March 22, 2019
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in The Village Voice
February 19, 2019
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in Artnet
February 18, 2019
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in Artnews
February 15, 2019
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in Artforum “Must See” List
September 27, 2018
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in Harper’s Bazaar
December 15, 2017
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in the Village Voice
December 7, 2017
Allan D’Arcangelo, Rosalyn Drexler, and Nicholas Krushenick Featured on BLOUIN ARTINFO
October 11, 2017
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in the Gulf News
October 1, 2017
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in Frieze
October 1, 2017
Rosalyn Drexler: Occupational Hazard Reviewed in the Brooklyn Rail
September 27, 2017
Rosalyn Drexler Featured on Artnet
September 19, 2017
Rosalyn Drexler Featured on Broadway World
September 11, 2017
Rosalyn Drexler: Occupational Hazard Reviewed on Time Out
September 10, 2017
Rosalyn Drexler: Occupational Hazard Reviewed on Hyperallergic
September 7, 2017
Rosalyn Drexler: Occupational Hazard Reviewed on Artnet
September 6, 2017
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in the Village Voice
June 1, 2017
Rosalyn Drexler Featured on Artforum
May 22, 2017
Rosalyn Drexler Featured on Hyperallergic
March 8, 2017
Rosalyn Drexler: Who Does She Think She Is? Reviewed on St. Louis Post-Dispatch
February 16, 2017
Rosalyn Drexler: Who Does She Think She Is? Reviewed on St. Louis Magazine
February 10, 2017
Rosalyn Drexler: Who Does She Think She Is? Reviewed on Alive Magazine
February 9, 2017
Rosalyn Drexler: Who Does She Think She Is? Reviewed on Riverfront Times
January 12, 2017
Rosalyn Drexler: Who Does She Think She Is? Reviewed on The Source
December 21, 2016
Rosalyn Drexler: Who Does She Think She Is? Featured on Amherst Bee
December 2, 2016
Rosalyn Drexler Featured on Artsy
December 1, 2016
Rosalyn Drexler: Who Does She Think She Is? Reviewed in The Village Voice
November 17, 2016
Rosalyn Drexler: Who Does She Think She Is? Reviewed on Blouin ArtInfo
September 1, 2016
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in Art in America
September 1, 2016
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in Art News
June 1, 2016
Rosalyn Drexler: Who Does She Think She Is? Reviewed in Harper’s
May 17, 2016
Rosalyn Drexler: Who Does She Think She Is? Reviewed on Hyperallergic
April 6, 2016
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in Human Interest at the Whitney Museum of American Art
March 18, 2016
Rosalyn Drexler Featured on The Arts Fuse
March 11, 2016
Rosalyn Drexler Reviewed in The Jewish Advocate
February 20, 2016
Rosalyn Drexler Featured on Artnet
February 19, 2016
Rosalyn Drexler Reviewed in The Boston Globe
February 12, 2016
Rosalyn Drexler at the Rose Art Museum
February 8, 2016
Rosalyn Drexler Interviewed on 500 Words, Artforum
January 20, 2016
Rosalyn Drexler Featured on Artfix Daily
January 13, 2016
Rosalyn Drexler Featured on Broadway World
December 7, 2015
Roslyn Drexler Featured on Artlyst
December 3, 2015
Rosalyn Drexler Featured on Hyperallergic
December 3, 2015
Rosalyn Drexler Featured on The Frisky
November 30, 2015
Rosalyn Drexler Featured on the Observer
November 30, 2015
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in the Financial Times
November 24, 2015
Rosalyn Drexler Featured on Gotham Magazine
October 11, 2015
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in International Pop at the Dallas Museum of Art
May 15, 2015
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in T Magazine
May 1, 2015
Rosalyn Drexler: Vulgar Lives Reviewed in Artforum
May 1, 2015
Rosalyn Drexler: Vulgar Lives Reviewed in Art in America
April 8, 2015
Rosalyn Drexler Featured in The New York Times
March 19, 2015
Rosalyn Drexler: Vulgar Lives Reviewed on the Design Observer
March 18, 2015
Rosalyn Drexler: Vulgar Lives Reviewed on the artblog
March 18, 2015
Rosalyn Drexler: Vulgar Lives Reviewed in Time Out New York
March 15, 2015
Rosalyn Drexler: Vulgar Lives Reviewed on Hyperallergic
