How Late Abstract Painter Lynne Drexler Became a Color Field Pioneer

In 1970, Lynne Drexler’s world suddenly became muted in color when a mental breakdown triggered temporary, psychosomatic color blindness. Yet despite this profound sensory shift, the artist never stopped working. Instead, Drexler sought solace in music, attending operas, like German composer Richard Wagner’s The Ring Cycle, where she sketched her impressions.

Drexler—sketchbook in hand—became a regular at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. There, she refined her lyrical abstract style, marked by complex, textured fields of color. At the same time, her palette adopted a more tonal quality, reflecting her temporary color blindness. These works on paper largely informed her 1970s paintings, including Titan/Titian Remembered (1975), which features rectilinear and curved shapes layered in a rich composition of yellows and mustards. This work is featured on the second floor of White Cube’s second solo exhibition of Drexler’s work, “The Seventies,” showcasing her previously unseen 1970s paintings and works on paper in Hong Kong until May 17th.

“The Seventies” is the latest in a string of events heralding Drexler’s long-overdue recognition, a resurgence that began with the dramatic March 2022 auction of her 1962 painting Flowered Hundred. Its sale, for a whopping $1.29 million at Christie’s New York, brought Drexler—a contemporary of other overlooked women painters Jane Freilicher and Lois Dodd—into sharper focus.

One person who took notice was Sukanya Rajaratnam, White Cube’s global director, who then worked at Mnuchin Gallery. Struck by the kaleidoscopic, textural painting, Rajaratnam partnered with Martha Campbell and Christine Berry of Chelsea’s Berry Campbell Gallery to stage a two-venue exhibition in 2022 titled “The First Decade.” Shortly thereafter, Rajaratnam joined White Cube, securing co-representation for Drexler between the blue-chip gallery and Berry Campbell Gallery in 2023. White Cube then presented its first solo exhibition of Drexler’s work in London last November, focusing on her 1960s period. Now, 25 years after her death, Drexler is receiving long-deserved critical acclaim worldwide.

A painter since childhood, Drexler never stopped pushing herself. “I could not stop painting, once I got started,” she once said. Born in Newport News, Virginia, in 1928, she began as a self-taught artist, later attending classes at the Richmond Professional Institute and the College of William & Mary. Following two extended trips to Europe in the 1950s, she settled in New York in 1955. There, she studied with Abstract Expressionists Robert Motherwell and Hans Hofmann, whose “push-pull” theory championing contrasting blocks of color shaped her earliest abstract explorations. From then on, distinct fields of color, marked by thick tessellated brushstrokes and rich chromatic interplay, became her primary focus.

In 1961, New York’s famed Tanager Gallery mounted Drexler’s first and only major solo exhibition during her life, featuring a series of her mosaic-like paintings. According to one of Drexler’s journal entries, it caught the attention of Betty Parsons, an artist and dealer of Abstract Expressionists. Even so, it was commercially unsuccessful. That same year, she met artist John Hultberg at The Artist’s Club in New York and, after a whirlwind romance, they married shortly thereafter. “You want to see a parallel life, like that movie Sliding Doors, where she continues to have solo shows on her own,” Rajaratnam said. “Like, ‘What if?’ But when she marries John, who’s much more successful and much more established, she’s almost his nursemaid at that point. Her career is completely cut short.”

With New York dealer Martha Jackson’s help, Drexler and Hultberg purchased a house on Mohegan Island, Maine, 12 miles offshore, in 1971. While intended as a getaway for the couple, the island primarily served as a refuge for Hultberg to manage his alcohol dependency. Consequently, Drexler largely retreated from the art scene, living between Maine and the Chelsea Hotel in New York, participating in only occasional, minor exhibitions. However, lack of recognition never deterred her.

“I love that she carries on this unique style,” said Berry. “She does not get swayed by the fact that nobody is showing her. She continues, she carries the torch.”

Drexler’s nervous breakdown and color blindness had been exacerbated by her increasingly strained relationship with Hultberg, whose drinking and infidelity placed a heavy burden on the artist. Drexler sought hospitalization in 1970, and immediately resumed painting upon her release. While her 1960s works were often rooted in nature, she now embraced Wassily Kandinsky’s idea that abstraction could be a visual equivalent to music. For instance, the title of Trebled / Tregled Blue (1974), a painting where striated rectangular forms are interspersed with swirling blues, is named after a musical clef.

Works from this period showcase Drexler’s unwavering dedication to her unique visual language, a synthesis of diverse influences. The works have a Post-Impressionist sensibility. For instance, Burst Blossom (1971), hung on the right wall on the first floor of the White Cube exhibition, evokes the pointillism of Georges Seurat with its dotted fields of green and orange, distributed alongside thick, swirling paint akin to Vincent van Gogh. Works like Sunshine Divine (1970), with its densely layered geometric brushstrokes, recall the patterned backgrounds of Gustav Klimt paintings, if viewed close-up.

These paintings are likely informed by her opera sketchbooks, which are marked by dense, detailed patterning. In Hong Kong, White Cube is showing a suite of 10 untitled wax-crayon-on-paper works, lining the wall along the second-floor desk. “She repeated shapes and colors and compositions over and over and over again,” said Berry, who points to Drexler’s persistent approach. “There’s really a mastery of what she’s doing, so when she gets to the canvas, it’s very thought out.”

Many of the works feature a much more tonal palette than the kaleidoscopic works of the 1960s. One standout example is Redoubled (1975), which features a field of alternating shades of pink and purple. These tessellated forms create complicated, hypnotic color gradients that appear to be collaged together.