Bonhams is hosting a selling exhibition dedicated to works by American Abstract-Expressionist painter Lynne Drexler, following a surge in interest in the artist’s works on the secondary market last year.
The exhibition, titled “Lynne Drexler: Play of Color,” will run through April 14 at Bonhams’ galleries in New York. It features 29 works by the artist from her early to mid-career, including oil paintings, works on paper and works on board. The exhibition has prices ranging from US$25,000 to US$950,000.
Highlights of the selling exhibition include oil paintings, Feather Blue, 1968; Raucous Green, 1965; Green Gage I, 1959; an untitled gouache on paper from 1959; and an untitled crayon and watercolor on paper from 1960.
The selling exhibition is curated by California-based gallerist and art consultant John Kenneth Alexander.
The selling exhibition includes 29 works by Lynne Drexler.
Courtesy of Bonhams
Drexler (1928-1999) moved to New York in the 1950s to study under the tutelage of Abstract Expressionists Robert Motherwell and Hans Hofmann. Feeling discontent with the commercial New York scene, where she saw limited success, she relocated to the remote Monhegan Island in Maine in 1971 and became a self-proclaimed “hermit” painter.
The coastal reprieve proved to be both profoundly spiritual and productive for the artist, functioning akin to Giverny for Claude Monet, Tahiti for Paul Gauguin, New Mexico for Georgia O’Keeffe, Bonhams said.
Drexler painted voraciously in the following years, but she was nearly forgotten in the art market. Not until 2008, a decade after her death, was a solo exhibition of her works presented by Monhegan Museum and the Portland Museum of Art in Maine.
Today, her works are in the collections of major institutions including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
Still, her works did not come under the radar of collectors on the secondary market until last year. While none of her works sold for more than US$10,000 at the public market before 2020, three paintings fetched close to or above US$1 million at auction in 2022.
In March 2022, Drexler’s painting Flowered Hundred (1962), sold for US$1.2 million at a Christie’s auction in New York, double the presale high estimate. Two months later, her 1960 painting Herbert’s Garden sold by Christie’s on behalf of the Farnsworth Art Museum in Maine for US$1.5 million, a price record for the artist at auction.
The momentum continued in the fall, when Bonhams sold her Grass Symphony (1962) just shy of US$1 million at an auction in Los Angeles, against a presale estimate between US$500,000 and US$700,000.
“Bonhams is honored to continue to champion Drexler who is finally gaining the massive acclaim that her extraordinary works deserve,” says Andrew Huber, head of Post-War and contemporary art at Bonhams New York.
Green Gage I, 1959
Courtesy of Bonhams
One of the highlights is Green Gage I, 1959, priced at US$250,000. “This painting is an example of the artist finding her own unique style, ‘patchwork,’ now immediately recognizable,” Huber says.
A particular star of the exhibition is Feather Blue, a masterpiece of the artists practice in the late 1960s, which is priced at US$950,000.
“By this point in the artist’s maturation, her signature ‘patches’ have enlarged and become more deliberate accompanied by additional shapes and forms, most notable being the wavy, verticals brushstrokes punctuated by significant impasto,” Huber says. “The execution is starkly reminiscent of Van Gogh’s Cypress trees.”
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