Sonia Gechtoff

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Sonia Gechtoff, Guardian of the Green, 1991-2002

Sonia Gechtoff (b. 1926, Philadelphia, PA, d. 2018, New York, NY) was an influential Ukrainian-American painter who began her career in Beat-era San Francisco but worked most of her life in New York.

Gechtoff found extraordinary success early in her career, staging solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Art (now SFMoMA) and the De Young Museum. She was included in the landmark 1954 group exhibition Younger American Painters at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and participated in the 1961 São Paulo Bienial in an exhibition organized by MoMA which included American artists such as Robert Motherwell, Lee Bontecou, Ellsworth Kelly, John Chamberlain, and Richard Diebenkorn. During her lifetime, Gechtoff exhibited at prestigious galleries such as the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, where she staged the inaugural solo show, as well as the Poindexter, Gruenebaum, and Kraushaar Galleries in New York.

In 2016, Gechtoff was included in the landmark exhibition Women of Abstract Expressionism, at the Denver Art Museum, which subsequently traveled to the Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina and the Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, California. Gechtoff’s work has been included in other recent group exhibitions at the Albertina Modern, Vienna, Austria (2022); Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York (2018), and the San Jose Museum of Art, California (2014), among others.

Gechtoff was a recipient of the Lee Krasner Lifetime Achievement Award and numerous Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants. Her work has been widely collected by institutions including the Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; Legion of Honor, San Francisco; Denver Art Museum, Colorado; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Academy of Design, New York; Oakland Museum of Art, California; San Francisco; Museum of Modern Art, California; Museum of Art, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California; Worcester Museum of Art, Massachusetts; San Jose Museum of Art, California; and The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., among others.

Exhibitions

Featured Image (Installation View) of exhibtion: Objects on the New Landscape

Objects on the New Landscape

12 Jan – 2 Mar 2024

The Upstairs at 39 Walker
Featured Image (Installation View) of exhibtion: Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70

Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70

9 Feb – 7 May 2023

Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK
Featured Image (Installation View) of exhibtion: Guardian of the Green

Guardian of the Green

14 Jan – 19 Feb 2023

Regen Projects, Los Angeles
Featured Image (Installation View) of exhibtion: Sonia Gechtoff

Sonia Gechtoff

24 Jun – 26 Aug 2022

55 Walker

Press

Jackson Arn Goings On The New Yorker Jan 2024Johanna Fateman Sonia Gechtoff The New Yorker Aug 2022Sarah Cascone 11 Events for Your Art Calendar This Week Artnet Aug 2022John Yau Sonia Gechtoff Finally Gets Her Due Hyperallergic Jul 2022John Yau Getting to Know an Overlooked Pioneer of Bay Area Abstraction Hyperallergic Dec 2021John Yau A Forgotten Painter and Her Visionary Abstraction Hyperallergic Oct 2019Neil Genzlinger Sonia Gechtoff, Acclaimed Abstract Expressionist, Dies at 91 The New York Times Feb 2018John Natsulas Rehistorizicing the Time Around Abstract Expressionism in the San Francisco Bay Area 1950s-1960s: Sonia Gechtoff in San Francisco Rehistorizing Jan 2012Faye Hirsch The Cool Revival: Sonia Gechtoff in San Francisco Art in America Jan 2011Michael Brenson Art: Sonia Gechtoff’s New Directions The New York Times Nov 1983Hilton Kramer Art: Sonia Gechtoff at her Best at Gruenebaum The New York Times Jan 1982Dore Ashton Art: Wester Abstracts. Sonia Getchoff, San Francisco Painter, Shows Work at Poindexteer Gallery The New York Times Mar 1959