Early Life
Rosalyn Drexler (née Bronznick) was born in 1926 in the Bronx, New York. She attended the High School of Music and Art in New York City where she majored in voice. She attended Hunter College for one semester only before leaving school to marry figure painter Sherman Drexler in 1946. She is the subject of many of her husband's paintings. They have a daughter and a son.
Rosa Carlo, the Mexican Spitfire
In 1951 Drexler pursued a brief career as a professional wrestler under the name "Rosa Carlo, the Mexican Spitfire." Andy Warhol made a series of silkscreen paintings based on a Polaroid he took of Drexler dressed as a lady wrestler. Drexler's experience as Rosa Carlo later formed the basis of her 1972 critically-acclaimed novel
To Smithereens. The novel inspired the 1980 film
Below the Belt.
Artistic Career
Drexler began making found-object sculptures while living in Berkeley, California where her husband was finishing his art degree. Made as amusements for display in her home, Drexler exhibited her work once she moved back to New York City at the urging of dealer Ivan Karp. One critic called these early works "ridiculous and nutty" sculptures that revealed a "real beauty beneath their I-don't-care attitudes."
Drexler had her first solo exhibition in 1960 at New York's Reuben Gallery, a downtown cooperative that showed other emerging Pop artists such as George Segal and Claes Oldenburg, as well as Allan Kaprow and other Fluxus artists. The first Happenings also took place at the Reuben Gallery, in which Drexler participated. However, the Reuben Gallery closed after a year. While other artists had little difficulty finding representation elsewhere, Drexler struggled.
Women were not bankable at that time. Every other male artistother galleries came along. I received no offers. In my naivete I thought it was because I was not a painter so I must make paintings. ...Rosalyn Drexler
Despite encouragement from sculptor David Smith to continue working in the same medium, Drexler switched her focus to painting in the early 1960s. Entirely self-taught, her process consisted of blowing up images from magazines and newspapers, collaging them on to canvas, and then painting over them in bright, saturated colors. Drexler started appropriating popular imagery in her art at the same time as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein were developing similar techniques, putting her at the forefront of the Pop art movement.
Drexler eventually signed with Kornblee Gallery, where she had solo shows in 1964-1966. In January 1964 her work was included in the "First International Girlie Exhibit" at Pace Gallery, New York. She and Marjorie Strider were the only two women Pop artists included in this landmark exhibition, which otherwise featured a variety of male artists including Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Tom Wesselmann. Drexler exhibited collages cut and pasted from girlie magazines. The work scandalized many, but her paintings were otherwise well-received. As one critic noted, "Miss Drexler’s collage paintingsfly through contemporary life and fantasy with a virtuosic, uninhibited imagination that is refreshingly direct in its frank expression of brutality, desire, pathos and playfulness."
Although her paintings continued to enjoy favorable reviews and were exhibited in major Pop art exhibitions throughout the 1960s, Drexler did not gain the same level of recognition or success as many of her male peers. Not only was she a woman in a male-dominated field, the major themes in her paintings...violence against women, racism, social alienation...were decidedly "hot" topics in a genre known for being "cool" and detached. For these reasons, her Pop paintings have been identified more recently as early feminist artworks, yet Drexler vehemently objects to the label.
Don't try to make me into a politically conscious artist. I wasn't. I don't teach lessons...My work does not lend itself to causes. Unless it does when I'm not looking. ...Rosalyn Drexler
Major Themes & Works
- The Love and Violence series refers to a body of paintings that depicts abusive relationships between men and women. The canvases evoke the covers of pulp fiction novels, B-movie posters, and scenes from gangster films or film noir. Titles such as I Won’t Hurt You (1964), This is My Wedding (1963), and Rape (1962) make explicit the sexual violence against women suggested in the scene. While the men depicted are most often the abusers, in some paintings, such as Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) and Dangerous Liason (1963), the power dynamic between the male and female subjects is left more indeterminate. Other works in this series include The Bite (1963), Love and Violence (1965), and Baby, It’s Alright (1963).
- Is It True What They Say About Dixie? (1966) was inspired by a newspaper photo of Bull Connor, the police chief who instigated the Birmingham race riot of 1963, leading a group of white supremacists. The figures advance towards the viewer dressed in nearly identical black suits against a stark white background. The painting's title is taken from an American song popularized in the mid-1950s by Dean Martin and Bill Haley that suggests the South is a romantic idyll. Drexler's painting acts as an ironic commentary on the racial violence of her time. Similar in composition and intent is the painting F.B.I. (1964) that both glamorizes the depicted government agents and inherently questions their status as figures of authority.
- The Men and Machines series shows working men with various types of mechanical equipment. The series speaks to Cold-War era obsession with technological advancements and plays on the cliché of machines as phallic symbols of male sexual power. Paintings in this series include Pilot to Tower (1966).
- Marilyn Pursued by Death (1967) is a haunting image of Marilyn Monroe being followed by a male figure. Although "Death" appears to be a stalker or member of the paparazzi, the photograph after which the painting was made makes clear that the man is actually her bodyguard.
- Paintings made after movie posters include King Kong aka The Dream (1963), modeled after the lobby card for John Lemont's 1961 film Konga, and Chubby Checker (1964), inspired by the poster for 1961 movie musical Twist Around the Clock.
