Independent 20th Century

For this year’s edition of Independent 20th Century, Garth Greenan Gallery is pleased to present a booth dedicated to the work of Rosalyn Drexler. The display coincides with Rosalyn Drexler: My Life Has a Life of Its Own at the gallery’s newly opened SoHo flagship at 25 Greene Street.

The presentation at Independent 20th Century features a carefully curated selection of the Bronx-born artist’s iconic Pop paintings from the 1960s, including the large scale canvases Kram and Friends (1964) and Night Riders (1965). The booth will also reunite a group of the artist’s found-object sculptures for the first time since their display at the exhibition Eleven from Reuben Gallery at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1965. 

At New York Fashion Week, designer Rachel Comey debuted a collection inspired by Drexler’s life and work. In October, Hagfish books will reissue Drexler’s 1974 novel The Cosmopolitan Girl and, on October 22, Anthology Film Archives will present an evening devoted to Drexler’s life, with screenings of the 1975 short documentary Who Does She Think She Is? and select home movies shot by Drexler with her husband, Sherman.    

About the Artist
Rosalyn Drexler (1926–2025) was born in the Bronx, New York. Part of the original generation of American Pop artists, Drexler began appropriating commercial imagery in the early 1960s—at the same time as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Only recently, however, has she received critical recognition for this achievement. Graphically intense and thematically dark, Drexler’s artworks channel the sinister undercurrents of American life, summoning themes of sexuality, violence, crime, and spectacle.