
55 Walker (Bortolami, kaufmann repetto, and Andrew Kreps Gallery) is pleased to announce a retrospective of the late Ukrainian-American artist Sonia Gechtoff (b. 1926, d. 2018). Gechtoff was an acclaimed painter who began her career in Beat-era San Francisco but lived most of her life in New York City. Gechtoff was overlooked for much of her career but has received renewed interest in her early career palette knife paintings and later career works which synthesized painting and drawing. This exhibition, organized in partnership with David Richard Gallery and the Sonia Gechtoff Estate, includes paintings on canvas and paper made between 1958-2017.
Gechtoff is best known for her atmospheric abstractions of swirling colors redolent of seas, skies or smoke. Inspired by the work of Clyfford Still, Gechtoff developed a distinct technique of palette knife painting. Her drawings were executed similarly, with long deliberate strokes of graphite that evoke windswept grasses and vegetation.
Works


Sea Door, 1966

Untitled, 2004

Garden, Wave and Waterfall, 2000

Wild Waves III, 1984

Wild Waves II, 1984

Wild Wave VI, 1984

Wild Wave II, 1984

Riders of the Wave, 1992

The Widow, 1958

Streamers 1, 1989

Memory of Cornwall, 1990

Blue Solstice, 2017

Untitled, 1992

Untitled, 1992

Untitled, 1992

Untitled, 1989

Untitled, 1992

Hiroshige Revisited, 1988

Hudson River Blue Green, 2007
