Rothko's Children Sue to Move His Remains

EAST MARION, N.Y.— Mark Rothko's son and daughter, Christopher Rothko and Kate Rothko Prizel, have petitioned a New York state judge to allow them to move their father's remains, the New York Times reports. The body of the Abstract Expressionist has rested for the past 38 years in a cemetery in East Marion, Long Island, and the artist's children are now hoping to rebury him in Sharon Gardens in Westchester County, a Jewish cemetery. Prizel and Rothko are also attempting to exhume the body of their mother, Mary Alice, who died six months after her husband, from a cemetery in Cleveland and bury her alongside Rothko.

In March 2007, the East Marion Cemetery Association voted to allow the exhumation, but the request cannot go through without a court order. The judge has recently received all of the paperwork and has three months to rule.

Prizel and Rothko must also obtain the approval of Georgianna Savas, the sister of artist Thedoros Stamos, who was a close friend of Rothko's and one of the original executors of the artist's estate. A year after Rothko's suicide in February 1970, the guardians of the Rothko children sued the estate's executors, resulting in a bitter lawsuit that lasted more than 10 years and resulted in a $9.2 million finding against the estate's executors.

The East Marion grave originally belonged to Stamos. Stamos's sister has said she would gladly offer Prizel and Rothko an additional plot for their mother's remains, so that the couple's bodies can lie side by side.

According to the petition, Rothko's children claim to have asked to bury Mary Alice alongside Rothko when she died six months after him, but the request was denied. Both Nancy Poole, the secretary of the East Marion Cemetery Association, and Savas say they do not remember the request.

Savas has said that regardless of the court's ruling, she would like to make two requests: that a historical marker be placed at the East Marion site, indicating that Rothko was buried there through the "good graces and efforts" of Stamos; and that another marker be placed on an empty plot adjacent to Rothko's current grave, indicating where she wishes her brother had been buried — alongside his best friend. Stamos died in 1997 on a Greek island.