LYNNE DREXLER: THE SIXTIES

White Cube is pleased to present “The Sixties”, a solo exhibition of works by the late American artist Lynne Drexler.

November 27, 2024 – January 10, 2025

Never fully capitulating herself to the movement, however, Drexler forged a unique aesthetic that synthesised a breadth of influences, including Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Pointillism and the all-over compositional structure of Abstract Expressionism. This exhibition marks her first major presentation in Europe and includes paintings, works on paper and mixed-media collages from a formative period in her artistic career which have never previously been exhibited.

Drexler’s abstract painterly language can be understood as a bridge between late-19th century and mid-20th century motifs and ideologies. The ‘Untitled’ works on paper show evidence of the artist’s interest in the Pointillist works of Georges Seurat, the dense patterning of Les Nabis, particularly Édouard Vuillard, and the spiritual qualities of Wassily Kandinsky. A great admirer of Kandinsky’s art and writing, Hofmann encouraged Drexler to consider the Russian artist’s idea that painting was a visual form of music and to make such analogies in her own work.

Later in her career, Drexler was known to paint as she listened to music and make drawings while attending the opera. From 1959–62, she worked in dense, tessellated swatches of colour, but beginning in 1963, she moved towards larger blocks and more varied shapes, and shifted her palette towards bright, saturated hues. In their use of flat, immersive colour, and with a focus on provoking an emotional response in the viewer, Drexler’s work can be seen to adopt elements of Colour Field painting, to bolster her visual language further still.

Although her work can be understood within the framework of the second-generation Abstract Expressionism to which her peers belonged, she also remarked: ‘I believed in [Abstract Expressionism] for them, but I never believed in it for me’. She continued to paint amidst the rugged, solitary conditions of the island, living without water or central heating, until her passing in 1999.