Rosalyn Drexler, Pop Art Pioneer and Multi-Hyphenate, Celebrated in Upcoming Show

Rosalyn Drexler, who died last year at 98, is being honored with a retrospective at Garth Greenan Gallery in New York this September. The exhibition will feature her paintings, writings, personal correspondence, and home movies, aiming to highlight her multifaceted career. Drexler, born in the Bronx in 1926, was a self-taught painter who brought a feminist perspective to Pop art, often using enlarged magazine ads and exploring gendered power dynamics. She also wrote novels, plays, and film reviews, winning an Obie Award for her first play 'Home Movies' (1964) and a Guggenheim fellowship. Her brief stint as a professional wrestler under the name Rosa Carlo, the Mexican Spitfire, inspired her novel 'To Smithereens' (1972). After a period of obscurity, her work has been revived by admirers like writer Jonathan Lethem and indie publisher Hagfish, which reissued 'To Smithereens' and will reissue 'The Cosmopolitan Girl' this fall. A documentary by Adam Harrison Levy is in the works.