Orientalist Cairo Market Street Scene, Middle Eastern Bazaar

Dimensions: H: 20.0, W: 16.0 IN

In original period wormwood frame. Leonid Gechtoff was born in Odessa, Ukraine, then a part of Imperial Russia, in 1883, He received his art school training in Russia, where he probably first met his fellow artist and close friend David Burliuk. His family moved to Cairo and Gechtoff painted many city and genre scenes of Egypt in his heavily impastoed style, bringing him acclaim in the Orientalist-enamored European art world as well. Gechtoff was most influenced by the work of Vincent van Gogh. In 1921 he settled in Philadelphia where Gechtoff’s paintings had a ready success. This established him as a prominent American painter. A portraitist, He painted former president Franklin D. Roosevelt and J. Edgar Hoover. Several big American museum’s have his work on display. Leonid's major patron was the Dutch Philanthropist Edward Bok. Along with inclusion in various group exhibitions, his work was featured in a solo show at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in the early 1930's. Gechtoff had achieved substantial success throughout the 1920's from his landscape paintings near his home in Philadelphia, and had also purchased a summer home on Cape May, New Jersey, where he painted many coastal scenes.

Gechtoff continued vigorously painting in his vivid and distinctive style, a blending of post-Impressionism and expressionism. His widow later moved to San Francisco and ran an influential exhibition space in San Francisco called the East-West Gallery, while daughter Sonia became a well-known Abstract Expressionist artist in New York City. Gechtoff is listed in the Archives of American Artists, part of the Smithsonian Institution. His eldest daughter, Sonia, became a successful artist as well.