Sonia Gechtoff The 60’s in New York A Series of Transitions

October 27 through November 19, 2021

www.davidrichardgallery.com

An exhibition that looks critically into this pivotal and transformative period following the artist’s move from San Francisco in 1958. Like the preceding decade, during the mid-1950s with Gectoff’s arrival in the Bay Area, the 60s were full of change and experimentation in New York. This presentation maps several such transitions, including: changes in Gechtoff’s painting medium and method of application; experimenting with collage and lithography; but most profound, the notable change of the imagery in her drawings and paintings.

The presentation will include paintings and drawings, the mainstay of Gechtoff’s repertoire from the 1950s and 60s. Both media share strong relationships to one another with bold marks, paint laden strokes on canvas, full bodied gestures with graphite on paper, and equal attention given to figure and ground that spans both decades. However, this presentation will focus on the technical, formal and aesthetic changes that occurred in the 1960s with respect to Gechtoff’s paintings and drawings and will also include the new media of collage and lithography from that period.

Regarding technique, Gechtoff moved away from the palette knife, which was her signature tool for marking the canvas and delivering thick impasto applications of paint in bold and determinative strokes. In large part, this was a result of her move from oil paint to the new acrylic medium that had become very popular in the 1960s. While she did continue to work in both oil and acrylic during that decade, her migration to brushes was distinctly noted in both media. The painting presented in this exhibition, Sea Door, 1966 is an oil painting, but the predominance of brush strokes is evident. By the 1970s, her migration to acrylic paint was complete and continued throughout the remainder of her career.