Lynn Drexler was an Abstract Expressionist painter born in 1928 in Virginia. Drexler graduated from Richmond Professional Institute in 1949 before taking art courses at the College of William and Mary. With encouragement from her mentors, Drexler moved to New York to study with Hans Hofmann and later studied with Robert Motherwell at Hunter College. Drexler began exhibiting her works in the late 1950s. Her first solo exhibit took place in February of 1961 at Tanager Gallery in New York. In 1962 Drexler honeymooned in Monhegan Island, Maine with her husband, John Philip Hultberg. Monhegan Island became a significant place in Drexler’s art, as she thoughtfully incorporated the shapes and colors into her work even after returning to New York. By 1983, Drexler was living full-time on the island of Monhegan. In the later two decades of her life, Drexler’s work became more representational, including costal elements and still life’s. Drexler received positive but sporadic feedback during her lifetime, her absence from the postwar canon has been attributed to the lack of gallery support for women artists and lack of appreciate compared to their better-known male peers at the time. In recent years, Drexler’s work has become extremely popular, especially since a 2022 joint exhibition organized by Mnuchin Gallery and Berry Campbell highlighting the first decade of Drexler’s work.

Image courtesy of the Archives of American Art. Photo: Buckley Sander