There are few artists who were once wrestlers, but then there are even fewer who were also novelists, playwrights and singers. Rosalyn Drexler, who has died aged 98, was all these and more.
Operating in the midst of the 1960s New York downtown scene, with artist peers such as Jim Dine and Andy Warhol, Drexler channelled a life lived well but often precariously, and close to the underbelly of society. The images she culled from magazines, adverts and posters for her pop art collages invariably featured gangsters and their molls, fighting couples and kissing lovers, King Kong and Marilyn Monroe. These photographs were pasted on to canvas and partially painted over with thick blocks of red, green, blue and yellow.
