Sonia Gechtoff

Subjects and genres recorded for the work are abstract art. Places of work recorded in the authority are San Francisco, New York City and Philadelphia. Employment is recorded with New York University. Work by Sonia Gechtoff is recorded in the collections of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art and Picker Art Gallery.

• Name — Sonia Gechtoff • Birth Name — Sonia Alice Gechtoff • Born — 25 September 1926 • Birthplace — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. • Died — 1 February 2018 • Place of death — New York City, U.S. • Education — San Francisco Art Institute • Alma Mater — Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts • Movement — Abstract Expressionism • Known for — Painting • Spouse — James Kelly (1953-2003; his death) • Children — 2

Sonia Gechtoff was born in Philadelphia to Ethel "Etya" and Leonid Gechtoff. Her mother managed art galleries, including her own East and West gallery located at 3108 Fillmore Street in San Francisco. Her father was a highly successful genre artist from Odesa, Ukraine. He introduced his daughter to painting and "had [her] sit beside him at his easel with a brush and paints and beginning at age six he was there to spur [her] on". 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 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts with a B.F.A. in 1950.

In 1951, Gechtoff relocated to San Francisco, sharing her social and professional life with Bay Area artists such as Hassel Smith, Philip Roeber, Madeline Dimond, Ernest Briggs, Elmer Bischoff, Byron McClintock, and Deborah Remington. She was immersed in the heady culture of the San Francisco Bay Area Beat Generation. According to Gechtoff, female abstract expressionists in San Francisco (such as Jay DeFeo, Joan Brown, Deborah Remington, and Lilly Fenichel) did not face the same discrimination as their New York counterparts. After moving she studied lithography with James Budd Dixon at what is now called the San Francisco Art Institute. She rapidly shifted to work as an Abstract Expressionist. Some of her most well-known artwork was done in the Bay Area, including the lyrical Etya which is in the Oakland Museum of California. Gechtoff married James "Jim" Kelly, another noted Bay Area artist, in 1953. She gained national recognition in 1954, when her work was exhibited in the Guggenheim Museum's Younger American Painters show alongside Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, and Jackson Pollock. Shortly after her mother died in 1958, Gechtoff and Kelly moved to New York, where they immediately became a part of the New York art world. She was represented by major New York 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.

• Year — Gallery — Place • 1993, 1991 — University Center Gallery, Adelphi University — New York, NY • 1992, 1990 — Kraushaar Galleries — New York, NY • 1989, 1984 — Witkin Galleries — New York, NY • 1987; 1985; 1983; 1982; 1980; 1979 — Gruenebaum Gallery — New York, NY • 1978, 1976 — Gloria Cortella Gallery — New York, NY • 1974 — Gallery One, Montclair State College — Montclair, NJ • 1966, 1963 — East Hampton Gallery — New York, NY • 1960, 1959 — Poindexter Gallery — New York, NY • 1959, 1957 — Ferus Gallery — Los Angeles, CA • 1957 — De Young Museum — San Francisco, CA • 1955 — Six Gallery — San Francisco, CA • 1952 — Labaudt Gallery — San Francisco, CA

• Year — Name of Exhibition — Gallery — Place • 1994 — Directions in American Abstraction: A New Decade — Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art — Loretto, PA • 1993 — Paper Trails: San Francisco Abstract Expressionist Prints, Drawings, and Watercolors — The Art Museum of Santa Cruz County — Santa Cruz, CA • 1992 — 56th Annual National Midyear Exhibition — The Butler Institute of American Art — Youngstown, OH • 1991 — Out of Abstract Expressionism — Schick Art Gallery, Skidmore College — Saratoga Springs, NY • 1990 — 79th Annual Exhibition — Maier Museum of Art, Randolph-Macon Woman's College — Lynchburg, VA • 1989 — Abstract Painting of the Fifties — 871 Gallery — San Francisco, CA • 1987 — Paper Now — Weatherspoon Gallery, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — Chapel Hill, NC • 1987 — Selections-Works on Paper — California Palace of the Legion of Honor — San Francisco, CA • 1985-1986 — American Art - American Women — Organized by Stamford Museum — Stamford, CT • 1985 — Cross Overs — Usdan Gallery, Bennington College — Bennington, VT • 1983 — Directions in Bay Area-A Survey of Three Decades, 1940s-1960s — Richard L. Nelson Gallery — Davis, CA • 1981 — New Dimensions in Drawing, 1950-1980 — Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art — Ridgefield, CT • 1977 — American Drawn & Matched — Museum of Modern Art — New York, NY