As an only child growing up in Newport News, Virginia, Lynne Drexler was drawn to art. In 1955, she moved to New York to pursue a formal education in painting. Studying under Robert Motherwell and Hans Hofmann, she adopted the latter’s theory of “push and pull”—a dynamic in which color and form create depth and movement in abstract works. Her swirling, densely patterned landscapes suggest the brushwork of Vincent van Gogh and Gustav Klimt. Drexler spent much of her career in the shadow of her husband, the painter John Hultberg, but now, 26 years after her death, a new exhibition celebrates her vibrant paintings from the 1970s. —Paulina Prosnitz