STEPHEN MAZOH

MAZOH--Stephen. Stephen Douglas Mazoh (Born: March 6, 1940 - Died January 26, 2023). Art dealer and collector Steve Mazoh died in Rhinebeck, New York, Thursday, January 26, 2023 from complications of Parkinson's disease. An influential advisor to collectors, curators, artists, and their heirs, Mazoh was a private art dealer known for his exceptional taste and discretion. Born in 1940 in New Jersey to Isadore and Esther Mazoh, Steve grew up in Baltimore. He attended the University of Pennsylvania for two years before graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hopkins University in 1962, with a major in philosophy. He began collecting and dealing prints by modern American artists and moved to New York in 1970 to set up shop. From a small gallery on East 76th Street he organized exhibitions of early works by Ad Reinhardt, Picasso drawings from the collection of Maya Picasso, and painting and drawings by Cy Twombly of the 1950s and 1960s. With Barbara Rose and Martin Kline, he mounted an exhibition of early drawings by Arshile Gorky that travelled to the Princeton University Art Museum, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. His special expertise was post-war American abstraction, and over his 50-year career he placed major works with prominent collectors and museums. In 1993, he brokered the sale of Van Gogh's Wheatfield with Cypresses to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at the time the single most expensive work of art the Metropolitan had ever acquired. In 1974 he purchased Milan Hollow Farm, outside of Rhinebeck and over the next five decades transformed a modest farm and house into an idyllic landscape with extensive gardens and structures. He was a serious student of horticulture and landscape design, and a keen creator of elegant interiors; as such he cultivated friendships with New York's creative community who shared his interests. A generous host with an infectious laugh, his weekend house parties were legendary. He left his townhouse on East 93rd Street in 1996 to move full-time to Rhinebeck with his companion, artist Martin Kline. He remained active in the secondary art market, but his focus centered on his eclectic art collection, which ranged from works by Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Ellsworth Kelly, Alexander Calder and Picasso, to Guido Reni, Joachim Wtewael, Rubens, Delacroix and Edgar Degas. Over the recent decades he was a generous donor to the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Gallery at Vassar College. His parents and sister, Lois Fish, predeceased him. He is survived by his husband Martin Kline, and deeply missed by his many friends.