Rosalyn Drexler, 1926 – 2025

Polymath Rosalyn Drexler, 98, died on Sept. 3 (wouldn’t Polly Math be a good drag name?). The Bronx-born Drexler was an artist, novelist, playwright and screenwriter, and professional wrestler. She married Expressionist painter Sherman Drexler in 1946; they lived near a wrestling gym, and soon she was working as "Rosa Carlo, the Mexican Spitfire.” By 1960 she was exhibiting as an artist: both paintings and sculptures, first Abstract-Expressionist and later Pop (she had showings around the world, and her work is seen at the Whitney and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others). Drexler wrote several novels, including novelizations of Rocky and Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway; her plays were seen Off-Broadway and around the country. Drexler told interviewer John Yau, “Maybe I just wanted to be confined in a huge playground with all kinds of things happening . . . Nothing is right and nothing is wrong in art. Maybe it’s a bad thing to be open. Maybe you should not reveal too much. However, there’s almost nothing left to reveal. Every recipe has been imitated.”