Sonia Gechtoff

Sonia Gechtoff (1926–2018) was an American painter and printmaker associated with Abstract Expressionism, first recognized within the San Francisco Bay Area before settling in New York in the late 1950s. Born in Philadelphia and trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, she developed in San Francisco a forceful abstract language, often using a palette knife to build slashing, materially assertive forms. Her early national visibility included the Guggenheim Museum’s Younger American Painters in 1954; she later showed with Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles and Poindexter Gallery in New York, and was included in Women of Abstract Expressionism at the Denver Art Museum in 2016. Her work is held by institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.