ROCKLAND, Maine – Lynne Drexler died in 1999 the way she lived: painting and drawing endlessly and passionately under the warm southern light streaming through her kitchen window on Maine’s Monhegan Island. a lover A member of the island’s community of several dozen year-round residents, Drexler had spent nearly two decades there, painting still lifes and landscapes alone with his inexhaustible creative drive. Those who knew him said it was a good life; He was happy with the darkness, he had found his place in the world.

But Drexler had another life at ground zero of the American art revolution, and his work from that period (some of which was discovered at his Monhegan home after his death) catapulted him from near-obscurity to posthumous superstar. You can see great examples of this now in “Lynne Drexler: Color Notes,” a powerful little survey of the late painter’s work at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. The basis of the exhibition is a half-dozen abstract canvases from the 1950s and 1960s, big and bold, with a distinctive style of cascading fields of color painted in short, blocky strokes, in soft collisions with each other.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Drexler lived at New York’s Chelsea Hotel and polished the bar at the Cedar Tavern with Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Franz Kline, founding members of Abstract Expressionism. He had studied under the movement’s leading teacher, Hans Hofmann, at the legendary Provincetown art school and studied with one of his friends, Robert Motherwell. He showed some of his work, but it wasn’t enough despite his obvious talents. Men dominated the evolving scene, characterized by crude, gestural images oozing with semi-violent machismo. Women were rarely taken this seriously. In the early 1980s, he packed up his canvases and fled to Monhegan for good.

After he died, the task of sorting through his life’s work—thousands of pieces tucked into the upstairs bedrooms or the basement of his white-clapboard home—was left to his Monhegan friends, Harry Bone, a retired merchant marine, and the artist couple Bill and Barbara. Manning. They started in the early 2000s. Invisible miracles came to light again and again. Outside on the grass, they uncovered large abstract canvases that had been rolled up and stored in the basement, untouched for decades.

In 2008, Farnsworth accepted Drexler’s six large abstract paintings from friends who were looking for a place, any place, to preserve their work. A few hang here now as refreshing examples of a unique talent: “Cismont,” 1962, a bush form that evokes the shambling overlap of sunlight and forest, short, heavy strokes of black-green followed by lots of sharp strokes of yellow; An untitled work from 1959-62 featuring a blooming center of off-pinks and lavenders bursting from black splotches.

These were the first of Drexler’s works to be purchased from the museum and remained in Farnsworth’s storage for many years. But recently the narrow story of American art has begun to expand, with curators seeking out artists who are either footnoted or left out of the narrative; Women who were mostly pushed aside were coming in.

“I think all museums are recognizing the gaps in the collection and thinking about lesser-known women artists, artists of color, and Indigenous artists,” said Jaime DeSimone, Farnsworth’s chief curator.

As a second-generation female Abstract Expressionist, Drexler became an important piece of an ever-expanding puzzle. Sensing the moment, Farnsworth decided to sell his two Drexlers at auction in 2021.

Each was expected to raise $40,000 to $60,000. “Our thinking was that we could maintain the remaining works (use the proceeds for that) and put them on the wall,” Farnsworth’s manager Chris Brownawell said. “And if we’re really lucky and we hit that top $60,000 mark, we can use that to buy more Drexler and really tell the full story of his career.” Astonishing them, the first sold for $1.2 million, the second for $1.5 million. “The price of chits dropped and we thought, ‘Wow, now we have something,'” Brownawell said.

On the walls of the permanent collection galleries surrounding Farnsworth’s Drexler exhibition, small green and black labels announce what Farnsworth has decided to do with this unexpected event. The labels read “Lynne Drexler Acquisition Fund,” placed alongside recently acquired works such as Elise Ansel’s “Cornbury II” (2023), a vibrant abstraction of an Old Master, and Carly Glovinsky’s shelf-stacked “Canning the Sunset” (2021). ” it says. with jars of colored sand in gradient tones reminiscent of sparkling twilight.

For institutions selling works from their collections, the acquisition hold may be misleading and sometimes unwelcome, but it is difficult to argue with the wholesome nature of Farnsworth’s initiative. The fund established in Drexler’s name allows the museum to acquire works by living Maine artists, helping them navigate the uncertainty Drexler is dealing with. women artists, Indigenous artists, and artists of color; all have been historically marginalized in the American art canon. “The goal is not to have another Lynne Drexler story,” Brownawell said. “We want to celebrate and support artists when they need it most, throughout their true careers.”

At Monhegan, Drexler seemed to consign his time as an abstract painter to a distant memory. From the outside, he may have blended in with the community of artists who flock to Monhegan in late spring, opening their studios to the summer tourists attracted by the island’s reputation as a haven for cheerful seascapes and lighthouse painters. But he was not like them, and in a way that most people never knew; His distinctive color blocking and exuberant brushwork were evident even as he painted clothes on the clothesline.

He sold what he could of the landscapes and still lifes he painted on the island, but he also gave away pieces to friends and neighbors for birthdays or other special occasions. “Almost everyone in Monhegan has a Drexler,” DeSimone said with a laugh.

Drexler would sometimes open his home to the curious, but the curious would often find him at work at his kitchen table rather than eagerly offering pieces for sale. “He wasn’t a big advocate for himself,” said Jane Bianco, Farnsworth’s curator who organized “Color Notes.” “He even called himself a monk, which was a bit of an exaggeration because he was quite the social force of the island. But he was also very practical: ‘How much do I have to pay for wood for the winter?’ That kind of thing.

But if they dared to go up or down his big white clapboard house, they might stumble upon another world, a larger world that he had abandoned all those years ago. Bianco said that in Drexler’s later years, due to poor health, he could no longer walk up the stairs: “But if you were willing to go up on your own and take things out and put them on the bed, you could find the most remarkable things.” .”

But most remained intact until his death. We can only guess why Drexler has them hidden somewhere. Was it the fame he never really achieved? Maybe. She was married to an artist John HultbergSomewhat known among the AbEx cohort during his lifetime has since disappeared from view. The marriage was turbulent; Hultberg was an alcoholic, and their retreat to Monhegan, where they summered together for years in the ’80s, was a last-ditch attempt to save the relationship. When Hultberg returned to New York after a brief stay, Drexler was left alone, signaling the end of the marriage.

In Monhegan, Drexler found community and peace. The painter devoted his gaze to the prairie fields, the rugged shores, and the harsh North Atlantic breezes that ruffled the laundry on its line outside in turbulent waves of color and light. His later works capture his love of that country, pulsating with bright waves of color and joyful thick sticks of paint traced intensely across the canvas.

In 2008, based on their discovery just a few years earlier, Monhegan Museum organized a retrospective Drexler’s mansionand was able to place it in the Portland Art Museum as well. After the show, Farnsworth bought six paintings and Portland bought one, but the exhibition was both ahead of its time and a victim of it. It opened at the height of the economic crisis, with the art market almost completely taken over and museums yet to embrace the work of rebalancing the gross gender divide.

As gratifying as it was to bring Drexler’s full story to light, it was also disappointing. “After seeing everything he did that people knew nothing about, we really wanted to uncover his story,” said Jennifer Pye, the museum’s director and chief curator. “This was before things got really exciting,” he said with a laugh.

Why now and not then? This is a question that cannot be easily answered. But what is clear is that Drexler’s legacy is much greater because of it. His work has been a lasting legacy to generations of Maine artists, a gift of support and respect he never had. How would the reclusive painter feel about this? Pye doesn’t hesitate. “It would be pleased.”

LYNNE DREXLER: COLOR NOTES

Until January 12. Farnsworth Art Museum, 16 Museum St., Rockland, Maine. 207-596-6457, www.farnsworthmuseum.org

Murray Whyte can be reached at [email protected]. follow him @TheMurrayWhyte.