Rosalyn Drexler ( Bronznick; November 25, 1926 – September 3, 2025) was an American visual artist, novelist, Obie Award-winning playwright, Emmy Award-winning screenwriter and professional wrestler. Although she had a polymathic career, Drexler is perhaps best known for her pop art paintings and as the author of the novelization of the film Rocky, under the pseudonym Julia Sorel.Cascone, Sarah. "The Artist Rosalyn Drexler, 90, was once a professional wrestler", Artnet, Retrieved November 11, 2018. Drexler lived and worked in New York City, New York."Rosalyn Drexler - Full Bio", Garth Greenan Gallery, Retrieved October 31, 2018.
Early life and education Rosalyn Drexler (née Bronznick) was born on November 25, 1926, in the Bronx, New York.John Yau, "In Conversation: Rosalyn Drexler with John Yau" the Brooklyn Rail, July–August 2007. She grew up in the Bronx and East Harlem, New York. Drexler had considerable exposure to the performing arts as a child, attending vaudeville shows with her friends and family. Her parents also exposed her to the visual arts at an early age, buying her art posters, books, coloring boxes, and crayons, which she cited as an influence. She attended the High School of Music and Art in New York City where she majored in voice. She attended Hunter College for one semester only before leaving school to marry figure painter Sherman Drexler at 19 in 1946. She is the subject of many of her husband's paintings.Her husband, a figure painter, considers her his only model—and 'that's the way it had damned well better be,' said Mrs. Drexler." Excerpt from Grace Glueck, "Hip Heidi," The New York Times, April 25, 1965. See also:
Professional wrestling career In 1951, Drexler and her husband lived in Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan near Bothner's Gymnasium, where a number of female professional wrestlers practiced. After a friend of Drexler's suggested that she might enjoy trying wrestling, she began to work out at Bothner's. She soon learned how to wrestle without hurting anyone and how to make maximum noise while wrestling to exaggerate the impact of her performance. Drexler eventually travelled for wrestling matches, which allowed her to travel to the South and to Florida under the character of "Rosa Carlo, the Mexican Spitfire."Roni Feinstein, "Strangers No More," Art in America, June/July 2007, p. 177. While on tour, she wrestled in odd places such as a graveyard and an airplane-hangar. There is also a photo of her getting ready with an advertisement that she would be fighting Mae Young, a famous professional wrestler. She went on tour around the country, but returned home after becoming upset about racism in the southern states, such as segregated seating and water fountains. Andy Warhol made a series of silkscreen paintings based on a photograph of Drexler as Rosa Carlo.Bradford R. Collins, "Reclamations: Rosalyn Drexler's Early Pop Paintings, 1961-1967," in Sachs and Minioudaki, Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958-1968, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, New York and London: Abbeville Press, 2010, p. 164.The photograph was not taken by Warhol as indicated by Collins.
Drexler's experience as Rosa Carlo later formed the basis of her 1972 critically acclaimed novel To Smithereens. She wrote the novel because she hated the experience, but thought it should not be wasted, and she should "at least get a book out of it." The novel was the basis of the 1980 film Below the Belt. The producers contacted Drexler about the title, to which she said that it was "not a wrestling title at all…[but] they said, 'It sounds sexy.'" When she was 54, she tried getting back into being an athlete and entered a power lifting contest, which she did not win.
She has made several paintings based around women's wrestling, including Take Down (1963), Lost Match (1962), and The Winner (1965).
Writing career
Novels
I Am the Beautiful Stranger (Grossman, 1965, ) One or Another (1970) To Smithereens (1972) The Cosmopolitan Girl (1974) Unwed Widow (1975)—written under the pseudonym Julia Sorel Starburn: The Story of Jenni Love (1979) Bad Guy (1982) Art Does (Not!) Exist (1996) Vulgar Lives (2007)
Adapted screenplays Written under the pseudonym Julia Sorel: Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway (1976)—Adapted from the screenplay by Dalene Young Rocky (1976)—Based on the screenplay by Sylvester Stallone Alexander, The Other Side of Dawn (1977)—Adapted from the screenplay by Dalene Young See How She Runs (1978)—Adapted from the screenplay by Marvin Gluck
Plays Home Movies (1964, ) The Line of Least Existence and Other Plays (1967, ) "Skywriting" in Collision Course (1968, ) "Hot Buttered Roll" in Theatre Experiment: An Anthology of American Plays (1968, ) Methuen Playscripts (1969) "Home Movies" in The Off-Off Broadway Book: The Plays, People, Theatre (1972) Fiction (1972) "Skywriting" in A Century of Plays by American Women, edited by Rachel France (1979) Transients Welcome: Three One-Act Plays (1984) "Occupational Hazard" in Women on the Verge: 7 Avant-Garde American Plays (1993)
Productions Home Movies—Judson Memorial Church, Provincetown Playhouse, NYC 1964 The Investigation—Theatre Company of Boston 1966; New Dramatist's Committee, NYC 1966; Milwaukee Repertory Theater 1966; Open Space Theatre, London 1969; Miami University, Ohio 1979 The Line of Least Existence—Judson Poets' Theatre, NYC 1969; Theatre of the Living Arts, Philadelphia 1970; Traverse, Edinburgh 1968; Network Theatre, NYC 1980 Hot Buttered Roll—New Dramatist's Committee, NYC 1968; Milwaukee Repertory Theater 1966; Open Space Theatre, London 1969 Skywriting—Cafe Au GoGo, NYC 1968; Dowling College, Suffolk County, NY 1973 The Ice Queen—The Proposition, Boston 1973; Kornblee Gallery, NYC 1965 (with puppets) Softly and Consider the Nearness—Manhattan Theatre Club, NYC 1973; West Carolina University, NC 1973 The Bed Was Full—New Dramatist's Committee, NYC 1972 She Who Was He—Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond 1974; Odeon Theatre, New York 1974 Travesty Parade—Center Theatre Group, Los Angeles 1974 The Writer's Opera—Theatre for the New City, NYC 1979. Graven Image—Theatre for the New City, NYC 1980; Oberlin College, Ohio 1980 Vulgar Lives—La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, NYC 1979 The Tree Artist—Gateway, Long Island, NY 1981 Starburn—Theatre for the New City, NYC 1983 The Mandrake—Center Stage, Baltimore 1983 Dear—SoHo Repertory, NYC 1983 Room 17C—Omaha Magic, NE 1983 Delicate Feelings—Theatre for the New City, NYC 1984
Television Drexler was one of 15 writers for the 1973 CBS comedy special Lily, starring Lily Tomlin, Alan Alda, and Richard Pryor.
Career in the visual arts Drexler began making found object sculptures for display in her home while living in Berkeley, California where her husband was finishing his art degree. The sculptures were plaster accretions, built around found scrap metal and wood armatures, and reflected the informal Abstract Expressionist-influenced Beat sculpture of the time. In 1955, Drexler exhibited her first works alongside her husband's paintings.
At the urging of the sculptor David Smith and art dealer Ivan Karp, she continued to exhibit after the couple moved to New York City. One critic called these early works "ridiculous and nutty" sculptures that revealed a "real beauty beneath their I-don't-care attitudes."V.P. "Nine [Tanager], " ARTNews, Summer 1961, p. 18. Her works were shown in New York in 1960 at Reuben Gallery, at which she participated in Happenings.L.C. "Three More Faces of Eve: Rosalyn Drexler," ARTNews, March 1964, p. 64. See also Bradford R. Collins, "Reclamations: Rosalyn Drexler's Early Pop Paintings, 1961-67" in Sachs and Minioudaki (2010), p. 164. Her work was praised by David Smith and Franz Kline of the New York School. When the Reuben Gallery closed after one year, she received no offers because "women [sculptors] were not bankable at [the] time." She made a swift shift to painting in an attempt to gain more offers. She did odd jobs to make a living while artmaking, including being a waitress, a cigarette girl, a hatcheck, and a masseuse.
By 1961, Drexler started changing her work from assemblage to Pop Art.Axell, Evelyne, and Angela Stief. "Rosalyn Drexler." Power up - Female Pop Art: Evelyne Axell, Sister Corita, Christa Dichgans, Rosalyn Drexler, Jann Haworth, Dorothy Iannone, Kiki Kogelnik, Marisol, Niki De Saint Phalle ; Kunsthalle Wien, 5. November 2010 Bis 20. Februar 2011, Phoenix Art. Köln: Dumont, 2010. 129.Elaine de Kooning with Rosalyn Drexler, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? Eight Artists Reply. Dialogue," ARTnews, January 1971. She searched through old magazines, posters, and newspapers to source imagery for her paintings. Her self-taught process consisted of blowing up images from magazines and newspapers, collaging them onto canvas, and then painting over them in bright, saturated colors. She also has a fondness for Elmer's Glue in her work, saying it "doesn't get enough credit for its role in art." Drexler never had a studio of her own while she wasn't a student, and usually worked anywhere she could, typically the home.
Drexler signed with Kornblee Gallery, where she had solo shows from 1964 to 1966. In January 1964 her work was included in the "First International Girlie Exhibit" at Pace Gallery, New York. She and Marjorie Strider were the only two women Pop artists included in this exhibition, which also featured Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Tom Wesselmann. Drexler exhibited collages cut and pasted from girlie magazines. The work scandalized some, but her paintings were mostly well received. One critic noted, "Miss Drexler's collage paintings…fly through contemporary life and fantasy with a virtuosic, uninhibited imagination that is refreshingly direct in its frank expression of brutality, desire, pathos and playfulness."J.J., "Rosayln Drexler and Tom Doyle [Zabriskie; April 15-May 4]" ARTNews, April 1963, p. 14."
Drexler's paintings continued to enjoy favorable reviews and were exhibited in major Pop art exhibitions throughout the 1960s. She did not gain the level of recognition of many of her male peers; the major themes in her paintings—violence against women, racism, social alienation—were controversial topics in a genre known for being "cool" and detached.Bradford R. Collins, "Reclamations: Rosalyn Drexler's Early Pop Paintings, 1961-67" in Sachs and Minioudaki (2010), p. 162. She stated:
I was happy being productive and having good friends and being ignored. But now I'm getting angry about it, looking back!
Drexler's Pop paintings have been identified more recently as early feminist artworks, although Drexler objected to this categorization, denying any deliberate political message in her work.Rosalyn Drexler, as quoted in Bradford R. Collins (2010), p. 166. In spite of this, in 1968, Drexler signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War."Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" January 30, 1968 New York Post
In 2018 her work received renewed critical attention and a career retrospective exhibition at the Rose Art Museum.""Rosalyn Drexler" Who Does She Think She Is?", Rose Art Museum, Retrieved July 29, 2018. In 2022, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden referenced the name of Drexler's 1963 painting "Put it this way" in their exhibit "Put It This Way: (Re)visions of The Hirshhorn Collection," which ran until Fall 2023.
Major themes and works
As well as drawing from her own experience, Drexler's work often revolves around women's roles as portrayed in pulp cinema, including women as moll, femme fatale, home wrecker - those in need of "moral comeuppance".Sid Sachs, reviewing Rosalyn Drexler in POWER UP: Female Pop Art. Kunsthalle Wien, Gargosian Gallery (Dumont Publishers) - p129. Her images were drawn from easily understood public media.