Gallerist John Kenneth Alexander is “a champion of overlooked artists from the post-war era.” Notable among the artists in his gallery is Lynne Mapp Drexler (1928-1999), a second-generation abstract expressionist who studied with Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell.

From January 1 through February 15, Lynne Drexler: Passages, The Miniature Oil on Panel Studies of 1959 will be shown at J. Kenneth Fine Art in Shelburne, Vermont.

Untitled, ca. 1959. Oil on cardboard study on panel, 7 x 5 in.

 

Alexander notes, “Like many women, Drexler encountered many obstacles in her search for gallery representation within the gender-biased atmosphere of the New York gallery world. While galleries were courting her husband, Drexler faced the insult and indignity of being ignored or belittled. As the mid-1960s approached, the movement of abstract expressionism entered its decline, eventually being replaced by Pop Art and, shortly thereafter, Op Art. Drexler was already making her own transition away from the movement by applying her signature style to a new series of visionary abstract paintings. Many of her abstract paintings created just after 1962 are clearly inspired by the landscape with the concepts of musical elements helping to guide the pictorial arrangements.”

Untitled, ca. 1959. Oil on cardboard study on panel, 6 x 3¼ in.

 

Alexander has produced six solo exhibitions of Drexler’s work including the first comprehensive gallery retrospective, Her Way, in 2020, featuring more than 50 works from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s.

Drexler lived permanently on Monhegan Island in Maine from 1983 until her death in 1999. While there, she painted still lifes and landscapes. Her brightly colored abstractions were rediscovered after her death. They embodied concepts she learned from Hofmann’s “push and pull” theory in which “pictorial space” was created by pushing a plane in the surface of a painting or pulling it from the surface through abstraction.

Untitled, ca. 1959. Oil on cardboard study on panel, 3 x 5 in.

 

Alexander recalls, “In the summer of 2018, I accepted my first of three invitations to explore the Drexler Estate Archives in Maine. Having been granted free rein to examine the collection, my primary mission at that time was to locate any remaining oil on canvas paintings from the highly sought-after 1959 through 1962 period—most of which had been purchased by other galleries or gifted to museums sometime in the 2000s.

Untitled, ca. 1959. Oil on cardboard study on panel, 7 x 3¼ in.

 

“Buried under suitcases and piles of personal effects, letters, and other odds and ends, a lone tattered bag lay abandoned in the corner of the room. Upon examining the contents of the bag, it became quite apparent that I had stumbled upon a treasure trove of approximately 35 forgotten early oil on panel studies. As a Drexler historian, I understood the significance of the paintings.”

Drexler’s posthumous fame has resulted in her large abstractions fetching more than $1 million at auction. —

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