Albert Walter Grokoest, physician and art collector, was born April 2, 1917 in Lincoln, N.H., the son of Stephen and Sana Grokoest. He received his undergraduate education at Hamilton College (B.S. 1940) and his medical degree from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons (P&S) in Dec. 1943, during the wartime accelerated program.

After World War II military service in Italy and residencies at Presbyterian Hospital in New York and the Cushing Veterans Affairs Hospital in Framingham, Massachusetts, Grokoest received a fellowship at the Edward Daniels Faulkner Arthritis Clinic at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. The study and treatment of arthritis would remain Grokoest’s primary interest throughout his career, though he also maintained a successful general practice for many years. A specialist in juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, he co-authored with Arthur I. Snyder and Ralph Schlaeger, Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis (Boston, 1962), which long remained a leading text in the field.

His interaction with arthritis patients – and perhaps his own experience undergoing Freudian psychoanalysis in the 1950s – made Grokoest a practitioner of “holistic medicine” before the term was generally used. He believed that emotional states – especially loneliness – could manifest themselves as illness and he educated both his patients and his medical students to see physical and emotional well-being as being inextricably intertwined. At the end of his life, he summarized these beliefs in an essay, “Nature’s Cure,” that was later made into a video documentary by Ken Browne.

To the general public, Grokoest was better known as a discerning art collector. His collection of about 300 pieces leaned towards works that reflected his interest in how psychological unease manifests itself in the physical body. He had important holdings of the Polish-born French artist, Jan Lebenstein; Edward and Mary Scheier; Jennings Tofel; and Pehr Hallsten. His collection’s sole Mark Rothko painting, "Untitled (Red Over Brown)," was a gift from the artist in gratitude for Grokoest’s services as physician and counselor. His most important acquisition was Egon Schiele’s "Portrait of the Painter Zakovsek" (1910) which he purchased at a charity auction for $5,000 in 1959. In 1983, he sold it at Sotheby’s for $2.4 million – then a record for the artist.

Besides his interest in art, Grokoest was a gifted amateur viola player with many friends and patients among New York City’s musical circles. He was a founding board member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and served as physician to the New York Philharmonic during its 1974 tour of New Zealand, Australia, and Japan.

Grokoest was on the faculty of P&S from 1949 until his retirement as a Clinical Professor of Medicine in 1989 He was then named a professor emeritus. He served on the staff of Presbyterian Hospital, 1947-1974, and was chief of Roosevelt Hospital’s arthritis clinic, 1974-1986.

Grokoest died on Sept. 22, 1991 in New York. His ashes were scattered in the woods of his birthplace.