The sharp, solitary eye of Sonia Gechtoff

Contributed by Natasha Sweeten / The contemplative works of Ukrainian American artist Sonia Gechtoff (born in Philadelphia 1926, died in NYC 2018), now on view at Bortolami and Andrew Kreps Gallery, range from the 1960s to early 2000s, but for me they evoke the frontality of Russian iconography, the dynamism of Italian Futurism, and the fractal abstractions of Sonia Delaunay. Gechtoff was fond of muted primary colors and variations of white and black, and her palette is deliberate and often subdued. Delicate graphite hatch marks spill across painted areas, suggesting movement and depth while presenting isolated instances from curious vantage points.

Most of these works are acrylic and graphite on paper mounted on linen, and there is a flatness to the chalkboard sheen that belies the active, unfolding landscape. But wait – are they landscapes? That form is implied, yet the works seem more focused on capturing the ephemeral: a puff of wind, a breaking icy wave, a frigid moonrise. What is notably absent is the human figure or much sign of human activity at all. Instead, we are left to surmise the scale of this world and to acknowledge its apparent obliviousness to our existence, much less our gaze.

At times Gechtoff deftly plays with formal boundaries, recognizing paintings as physical entities and anticipating what today we take for granted: a picture within a picture, or, perhaps more accurately here, a picture on a picture. In an untitled 1986 piece, she crops the bottom of the image with broken, horizontal black and purple bands from which two purple smokestack-like shapes emerge, their hard edges anchoring the composition. It’s an unusual and bold decision, inviting various interpretations of the landscape beyond: perhaps the bands are a berth for the viewer; perhaps the painting captures competing moments or perspectives; perhaps Gechtoff’s intension by fracturing space is to emphasize the piece’s objecthood.

The most straightforward landscape, another untitled painting from 1986, is a fiery field of mainly siennas and burnt oranges and reds. Again, hard edges control the bottom of the picture plane while jagged and wispy forms flash like impending cloudbursts above. The unmistakable star of the painting is a demure moon, its trail of light unspooling like a ball of illuminated white yarn. Its placement denotes the surrounding flurry of brushstrokes as sky, that space collapsing against the now undefined edge of field.

The lone collage on view is the circular Untitled (Round Icon Collage), from 1962, at Andrew Kreps Gallery. Here Gechtoff lets loose, shedding her more ascetic palette in favor of a few pinks and baby blues and allowing the paper, with its whiteness and torn edges, to emerge from the picture plane, like frenzied waves spied from a porthole.

Not as familiar with Gechtoff as I’d like to be, I looked up her 2018 obituary in the New York Times. She is described as “a prominent Abstract Expressionist” who came to critical attention while living on the West Coast, moving to New York City in 1958 with her artist husband James Kelly. Judging from the accompanying images, her work was impressively varied and evolved over many decades. The two shows now up offer a portal into what seem to be her more mystical and somber periods – reflections on the solitude and evanescence of a life.

“Sonia Gechtoff: Objects on the New Landscape,” Bortolami, 39 Walker Street, New York, NY, through March 2, 2024; and Andrew Kreps Gallery, 394 Broadway, New York, NY, through February 10, 2024.

About the author: Natasha Sweeten is a New York artist who mostly paints and sometimes writes.