Sonia Gechtoff
| Sonia Gechtoff | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Sonia Alice Gechtoff 1926 (age 90–91) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | School of Industrial Arts, now the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts California School of Fine Art, now the San Francisco Art Institute |
| Known for | Painting |
| Movement | Abstract Expressionism |
| Spouse(s) | James Kelly (1953-2003; his death) |
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. Her mother managed art galleries, including her own East West gallery in San Francisco. Her father was a highly successful genre artist from Odessa, 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 Philadelphia Museum School of Art (now the University of the Arts) 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, , and Deborah Remington. 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.
Gechtoff married James 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.
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