Sonia Gechtoff

Art Brokerage: Sonia Gechtoff American Artist: b. 1926. Sonia Gechtoff (born 1926, Philadelphia, USA) is an American abstract expressionist painter. Her primary medium is painting but she has also created dozens of drawings and prints. Sonia Gechtoff was born in Philadelphia to Ethel (Etya) and Leonid Gechtoff. Gechtoff's talent was recognized early and she was put in a succession of schools and classes for artistically gifted children. She graduated from the Philadelphia Museum School of Art (now the University of the Arts (Philadelphia) with a BFA in 1950. In 1951, she relocated to San Francisco, sharing her social and professional life with such famous Bay Area artists as Hassel Smith, Philip Roeber, Madeline Dimond, Ernest Briggs, Elmer Bischoff, Byron McClintock, Deborah Remington and Howard Hack. Her works from this period were on "big" canvases. Gechtoff married James Kelly, another noted Bay Area artist, in 1953. Gechtoff and Kelly moved to New York in 1958 where she immediately became a part of the New York art world. She was represented by major galleries, among which were Poindexter and Gruenebaum, receiving consistently excellent reviews for her work. Teaching appointments and visiting professorships to New York University, Adelphi University, Art Institute of Chicago and the National Academy Museum and School, among others, were part of her professional life. Prior to leaving for San Francisco, Gechtoff was heavily influenced by Ben Shahn's style of social realism. Her work was figurative at that time. Art in San Francisco when Sonia arrived was heavily directed by artists who had studied or taught at the California School of Fine Art (now the San Francisco Art Institute). Above all were the works of Clyfford Still to which she was introduced by her friend Ernie Briggs. She rapidly shifted to Abstract Expressionism, taking from Still's work important lessons about line and shape. She is sometimes referred to as a "second-generation" abstract expressionist. Some of her finest work was done in the Bay Area, including the lyrical "Etya" which is in the Oakland Museum of California. In 1956 she inaugurated her complex "hair" drawings, masses of line that tangled into wispy shapes that float on the paper. Her bold, swirling compositions won her a place in the United States Pavilion at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958. According to Charles Dean, whose collection of Abstract Expressionist prints was acquired by the Library of Congress, Gechtoff was "...the most prominent woman working in California in the '50s". Gechtoff has continued to develop her work throughout her career, never staying with one style. Always abstract, her work began to incorporate graphite after a switch to acrylics from oil. The result has given a sense of linear rhythm to her work. She also developed an interest in doing a series of work on a theme as well as sets, multiple canvases comprising a single complete work. Listings wanted.