How Canny Market Players Helped Push Once-Obscure Painter Lynne Drexler’s Prices From Fifty Bucks to Over $1 Million
The painter lived for decades on a remote island in Maine.
By Eileen Kinsella
The Abstract-Expressionist painter Lynne Drexler toiled in obscurity for decades, much of it on a remote island in Maine. In the 10 years after her death, in 1999, a few regional auction houses and mid-range dealers discovered the artist and developed a five-figure market for her work.
Then, just this year, the auction market for Drexler’s work exploded. At a Christie’s New York mid-season sale in March, Drexler’s painting Flowered Hundred (1962), estimated at $40,000 to $60,000, rocketed to $1.2 million. (It was reportedly acquired by Amy Cappellazzo’s newly formed advisory firm Art Intelligence Global on behalf of a client.) Another work, Keller Fair (ca. 1959), sold for $69,300 compared with a high estimate of $15,000.