Sherman Drexler (1925 – 2014) was an American figurative expressionist best known for his paintings of female nudes. He later taught at several institutions, including Cooper Union School of Art (1974) and the University of Pennsylvania (1980). His career spanned more than 50 years. He was married to Pop artist and playwright Rosalyn Drexler.
Drexler began painting at an early age; he was painting in earnest when he was 17 years old, modelling his work after Henri Matisse and Amadeo Modigliani. He was admitted to University of California, Berkeley as an English major, but began studying the works of Old Masters, Da Vinci in particular, and left Berkeley without completing his studies. He earned his degree a decade later when he returned to receive a B.F.A.
Drexler's first exhibition, in 1956, was in Berkeley, California at the Courtyard Gallery. Drexler returned to New York in the same year and began teaching at a local junior high school. In 1958, Drexler made his New York premier with an exhibition at the Seven Arts Gallery. He also enrolled at Hunter College where he studied under prominent artists including Robert Motherwell.
Although Drexler was a figurative painter at a time when abstract expressionism enjoyed great popularity, he soon became a part of the New York School of the late 1950s and 1960s. He met and befriended Franz Kline, Andy Warhol, and Alex Katz. In the early 1960’s Drexler was featured in many solo exhibitions including shows at New York City galleries, including the Rice and Tibor De Nagy Galleries. Many of Drexler's works in this period took female nudes as subjects, setting them against monochromatic backgrounds. Drexler's works often made reference to contemporary events, including Pete Rose's defeat by Joe DiMaggio, or mythical/biblical narratives, such as Leda and the Swan or Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden. Drexler's works often portrayed the human body in motion.
In 1966, Drexler was awarded a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. In 1983, Drexler made a journey to the Cave of Altamira in Spain and the Grotte Chauvet Grotte Chauvet in southern France. The Paleolithic drawings that he saw there influenced his later work. Though Drexler continued his work with the female nude, he turned his attention to representing animals, using found objects, painting on stones wood and scrap metal as his canvases. He developed an interest in Primitivism which he displayed in 1995 in a group show featuring older artists titled "Still Working. In 2005, the New York Times reviewer Ken Johnson described a "persuasive sense of urgency" in the work and described Drexler as a "modern cave painter.”
