• Artist: Sonia Gechtoff 
• Materials: Oil paint on canvas

• Dimension: 69 × 83 in
• Classification: Painting

This artwork illustrates some ways women identified and combined styles of bold action and thoughtfulness when creating Abstract Expressionism. Influenced by her time in Italy, where she studied Giotto’s frescoes of the Renaissance, Gechtoff enjoyed thick impasto oils in vibrant blue colors and swirling brushstrokes that denote the act of creation and the idea of motion. The piece perhaps contains a narrative centered on beginnings, beginnings from nature and life. Gechtoff can bring the tradition of old art forms and ideas into the realm of modern abstraction, which is important. Other male artists seemed invested principally in the gesture of pure emotion or the gesture of pure form when working with the potential of abstraction, while Gechtoff embodied her history, myths, and meanings as a human and artist.