This Ukrainian American painter is often labelled an Abstract Expressionist, but a selection of her works, spanning almost sixty years—Gechtoff died in 2018— reveals a versatile talent who didn’t limit herself to any single approach. Her surfaces can be scumbled or impasto, the paint handling feathery or hard-edged, and a composition can as easily evoke landscape or architecture as it does nonobjective space. Gechtoff’s color sense is always beguiling, whether the mood is Cimmerian or crystal bright. The artist lived in New York City for most of her life, but she spent her formative years in San Francisco, among the Beats, a closeknit scene that was hospitable to idiosyncrasy. The earliest canvas on view, from 1958, was made in the Bay Area—a towering vertical storm of black-and-white pigment, with a smeary, starlike clot of red at the center, titled “The Widow.” Twenty-five years later, by then in New York, Gechtoff made “Wild Wave,” a series of acrylic-and-graphite works on paper, whose delicately detailed craggy forms, adrift in vivid seas, convey the artist’s lifelong eclecticism, command of structure, and, especially, penchant for drama.

— Johanna Fateman

Associated Artist

• Sonia Gechtoff

Associated News

• January 28, 2024
  The sharp, solitary eye of Sonia Gechtoff
  Two Coats of Paint
  Natasha Sweeten
  January 28, 2024
  


• January 28, 2024
  The New Yorker Goings On


• August 1, 2022
  Sonia Gechtoff
  Artnet
  Sarah Cascone
  August 2022
  


• August 1, 2022
  Sonia Gechtoff
  The New Yorker
  Johanna Fateman
  August 2022
  


• July 27, 2022
  Sonia Gechtoff Finally Gets Her Due
  HyperAllergic
  John Yau
  July 27, 2022
  
  


• December 2, 2021
  Getting to Know an Overlooked Pioneer of Bay Area Abstraction
  HYPERALLERGIC
  John Yau
  December 2, 2021
  


• October 27, 2021
  Sonia Gechtoff
  The 1960s In New York: A Series of Transitions
  ArtDaily
  October 27, 2021
  
  


• October 27, 2021
  Sonia Gechtoff
  The 1960s In New York: A Series of Transitions
  GalleriesNow
  
  


• April 26, 2021
  Press Release - Sonia Gechtoff: Gesture Meets Hard Edge: Part 1


• April 26, 2021
  Sonia Gechtoff: Gesture Meets Hard Edge: Part I
  GalleriesNow
  April 26, 2021
  
  


• October 12, 2019
  A Forgotten Painter and Her Visionary Abstraction
  Hyperallergic
  John Yau
  October 12, 2019
  


• September 9, 2019
  Paintings from 1988 to 1995 10 Sep?—?5 Oct 2019 at the David Richard Gallery
  Wall Street International Magazine
  September 9, 2019
  


• September 9, 2019
  Paintings from 1988 to 1995
  Wall Street International Magazine 09/09/2019
  
  


• September 4, 2019
  Sonia Gechtoff: Forces of Nature on the Grand Stage: Paintings from 1988 to 1995
  Galleriesnow.net
  September 4, 2019
  


• August 28, 2019
  Press Release - Sonia Gechtoff "Forces of Nature on the Grand Stage: Paintings from 1988 to 1995"


• March 14, 2018
  Sonia Gechtoff - The End of an Era in the Male-Dominated Abstract Expressionism
  Ideelart
  March 14, 2018
  By Phillip Barcio
  


• February 9, 2018
  Sonia Gechtoff, Acclaimed Abstract Expressionist, Dies at 91
  The New York Times
  By Neil Genzlinger
  
  


• February 9, 2018
  SONIA GECHTOFF (1926–2018)
  ArtForum
  February 9, 2018
  
  


• February 8, 2018
  Sonia Gechtoff was a key but little-recognized figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement.


• May 22, 2017
  Drawings from the early 1960's by Sonia Gechtoff on view at Anders Wahlstedt Fine Art
  ArtDaily.com
  Ma7 22, 2017
  
  


• June 23, 2016
  The Divine Dozen: Sonia Gechtoff’s Star Still Shines Brightly
  by Rosemary Carstens
  


• February 22, 2015
  Momentum: An Experiment in the Unexpected
  San Jose Art Museum
  February 22, 2015
  
  


• April 13, 2014
  Sonia Gechtoff in Her Studio: Then and Now
  Westbeth.org
  


• October 17, 2011
  Sonia Gechtoff: The Ferus Years
  Published on Oct 17, 2011
  A collection of Ferus era drawings and paintings at Nyehaus.
  
  


• January 20, 2011
  The Cool Revival: Sonia Gechtoff in San Francisco
  Art In America
  By Faye Hirsch
  January 20, 2011