*Also Opening May 11: “Sonia Gechtoff – Paper Paintings” May 11 – June 17 | Anders Wahlstedt Fine Art | 40 East 63rd Street, 3rd Floor New York, NY 10065 The Anita Shapolsky Gallery is pleased to present “A Non-Objective Couple”, an exhibition featuring husband and wife team Sonia Gechtoff and James Kelly. This exhibition features some of the remaining works of these artists’ oeuvres. As prime examples of the San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism’s raw, unique influence, Gechtoff and Kelly’s experimental approaches are exemplary of the collective coolness of the Bay Area. A focus on smooth, otherworldly strokes permeate their works, in contrast to the faster movements and more vibrant palette of New York, where much of the cultural dialogue came from and where they eventually settled. Inspired by poetry, particularly by their contemporaries of the Beat generation, Gechtoff, Kelly, and their peers viewed painting as the visual component of literature, yet unlike their New York counterparts, emphasized this duality through allusions to distant figuration, swirling motifs, spiritual encounters, and visual representations of verbal expression in their paintings. Originally from Philadelphia, Gechtoff and Kelly married in 1953 in San Francisco and moved to a loft on the legendary Fillmore Street, where contemporaries Jay DeFeo, Wally Hedrick, and Michael McClure also lived. They were active participants in the Beat scene, and exhibited at King Ubu Gallery on 3119 Fillmore Street, one of the several locations where the heartbeat of the scene pulsed.
New York City, NY; NYC