Virtual ExhibitsTitle:
PAINTING #1
Artist:
Gechtoff, Sonia (1926-2018)
Medium:
Oil on Canvas
Date:
1956
Object ID:
X1965.06.07
Description:
Sonia Gechtoff was a key but little-recognized figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement.
Sonia Gechtoff began her career immersed in the heady culture of the San Francisco Bay Area Beat Generation, producing abstract paintings and drawings with tantalizing hints of figuration. Inspired by poetry, Gechtoff approaches her work with a belief in the expressive power of color, individual brushstrokes, and thickly applied oil paint.
This painting is covered in a textured impasto of paint daubs layered on with a palette knife in a range of colors that vary from ochres, reds, blacks, greys, whites and a slight blue purple color. The manner in which the paint is applied leaves no color pure, but mixes wet paint into wet paint and all the colors contain traces of other color. The areas that contain mostly reds and ochres are found along the bottom edge of the painting, on the left and right with a triagular passage of greys and faint blue purple dividing the two areas. The ochre areas join in the center of the painting but quickly give way to grey and dark grey brushstrokes that dominate the top half of the canvas. This energetic mass feels as violent as leaves in a windstorm, but dissipates into a solid, calm, blue grey surface that dominates the top eighth of the painting and breaks completely from the rest of the painting's energy and motion.
Sonia Gechtoff began her career immersed in the heady culture of the San Francisco Bay Area Beat Generation, producing abstract paintings and drawings with tantalizing hints of figuration. Inspired by poetry, Gechtoff approaches her work with a belief in the expressive power of color, individual brushstrokes, and thickly applied oil paint.
This painting is covered in a textured impasto of paint daubs layered on with a palette knife in a range of colors that vary from ochres, reds, blacks, greys, whites and a slight blue purple color. The manner in which the paint is applied leaves no color pure, but mixes wet paint into wet paint and all the colors contain traces of other color. The areas that contain mostly reds and ochres are found along the bottom edge of the painting, on the left and right with a triagular passage of greys and faint blue purple dividing the two areas. The ochre areas join in the center of the painting but quickly give way to grey and dark grey brushstrokes that dominate the top half of the canvas. This energetic mass feels as violent as leaves in a windstorm, but dissipates into a solid, calm, blue grey surface that dominates the top eighth of the painting and breaks completely from the rest of the painting's energy and motion.
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Painting, Painting #1, X1965.06.07
Painting, Painting #1, X1965.06.07
