(1926 - 2018)
Sonia Gechtoff
Sonia Gechtoff was considered one of the most influential female Abstract Expressionists. Her father was a painter and introduced her to socialist realism at a young age. She was greatly inspired by Clyfford Still, though she crafted a signature style for herself by using a loaded palette knife to create vibrant, gestural strokes at large scales. In 1957, she was given her first solo exhibition at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles.
As a prime example of the San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism’s raw, unique influence, Gechtoff’s experimental approaches are exemplary of the collective coolness of the Bay Area. A focus on smooth, otherworldly strokes permeate her works, in direct contrast to the faster movements and more vibrant palette of the New York School. Inspired by poetry, particularly by her contemporaries in the Beat generation, Gechtoff and her peers viewed painting as the visual component of literature and emphasized this duality through allusions to distant figuration, swirling motifs, spiritual encounters, and visual representations of verbal expression in her paintings. She was a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 1989, 1994, and 1998, and received the Lee Krasner Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. Gechtoff was one of the twelve women featured in the traveling Denver Art Museum exhibition, Women of Abstract Expressionism, curated by Gwen Chanzit.
Selected Collections
Achenbach Foundation, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco
American Telephone & Telegraph, New York
Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, Arkansas
Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland
Crocker Art Museum, Blair Collection of Bay Area Abstract Expressionism, Sacramento, California
Chase Manhattan Bank NA, New York
Chemical Bank, New York
Ciba Geigy Corporation, Ardsley, New York
Commerce Bancshares, Kansas City, Missouri
Continental Grain Company, New York
General Electric Company, Fairfield Connecticut
Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California
Library of Congress, Charles Dean Collection, Washington, D.C.
Menil Collection, Houston, Texas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Museum of Art, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York
National Academy Museum and School, New York
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.
Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, Logan, Utah
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA
Oakland Museum of Art, Oakland, California
Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania
Pasadena Museum of Art, Pasadena, California
Prudential Insurance Company of American, Newark, New Jersey
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California
San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, California
Seattle First National Bank, Seattle, Washington
Singer Company Collection, New York
(The) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
United States Department of State, Art Bank Program, Washington, D.C.
Stephens, Inc., Little Rock, Arkansas
University of Iowa Art Museum, Iowa City, Iowa
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts
University of Nebraska Art Museum, Sheldon, Nebraska
Works
