Sonia Gechtoff
In 1951, Sonia Gechtoff moved to San Francisco, where she took a class in lithography from James Budd at the California School of Fine Arts. There she was exposed to Clyfford Still, Frank Lobdell and Ernest Briggs and their movement of Bay Area Expressionism. From 1952-1965 her abstract paintings with impasto and palette-knife applied paint reflected that influence and brought her success. It was written that her "expressionistic figure paintings soon evolved into tempestuous abstract expressionist works which brought her national acclaim as one of the most promising artists of her generation.”
In the 1980s, she expanded that technique with increasingly larger and less-controlled acrylic paintings that had elements of realism, architectural and landscape images. Of these works, a reviewer wrote:..."geometric and eccentric shapes mingle freely; hard-edge and painterly approaches combine without contradiction; and audacious colors coexist. The conflicts between abstraction and representation or between freedom and discipline don't even come to mind."
Solo and Selected Exhibitions include the Whitney Biennial in New York, Dublin Gallery in Philadelphia, Lucien Labaudt Gallery in San Francisco, Six Gallery in San Francisco, Santa Monica Pier, Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, Poindexter Gallery in New York, Albright College in Pennsylvania, Westbeth Galleries in …
In 1951, Sonia Gechtoff moved to San Francisco, where she took a class in lithography from James Budd at the California School of Fine Arts. There she was exposed to Clyfford Still, Frank Lobdell and Ernest Briggs and their movement of Bay Area Expressionism. From 1952-1965 her abstract paintings with impasto and palette-knife applied paint reflected that influence and brought her success. It was written that her "expressionistic figure paintings soon evolved into tempestuous abstract expressionist works which brought her national acclaim as one of the most promising artists of her generation.”
In the 1980s, she expanded that technique with increasingly larger and less-controlled acrylic paintings that had elements of realism, architectural and landscape images. Of these works, a reviewer wrote:..."geometric and eccentric shapes mingle freely; hard-edge and painterly approaches combine without contradiction; and audacious colors coexist. The conflicts between abstraction and representation or between freedom and discipline don't even come to mind."
Solo and Selected Exhibitions include the Whitney Biennial in New York, Dublin Gallery in Philadelphia, Lucien Labaudt Gallery in San Francisco, Six Gallery in San Francisco, Santa Monica Pier, Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, Poindexter Gallery in New York, Albright College in Pennsylvania, Westbeth Galleries in New York, San Francisco Museum of Art, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She received a Ford Foundation fellowship in Tamarind Lithos in Los Angeles. Her work is in the collections of the National Gallery in Washington D.C. and in both the Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Courtesy of askART
