Michael Himovitz, the debonair gallery owner who died in 1994, fancied Sacramento a cosmopolitan artists colony – not just some sleepy cow town on the road to nowhere, as various people had suggested.

"He started the Sacramento art scene," says longtime friend D. Oldham Neath. "Michael was one of the first people who said, 'I'm going to open a huge, gorgeous space with paintings on the walls.' He started the idea that Sacramento could be another New York City, and you couldn't discourage him that it wouldn't happen."

Himovitz's upstairs gallery at 1020 10th St. in downtown Sacramento was legendary in its day, with high ceilings, white walls, natural light and gray, cushiony carpet. It was there he cultivated Sacramento's hot young artists and would-be art collectors. It's where, in 1993, he dreamed up the monthly open-galleries idea that grew into today's resoundingly popular Second Saturday Art Walk.

And now, 15 years after his death at age 45 of complications from HIV/AIDS, the artists whom Himovitz represented are coming together for a short-lived, once-in-a-lifetime show, "1020: A Celebration of the Michael Himovitz Gallery."

Organized by Neath, who was 19 when Himovitz hired her as his assistant, the six-day exhibition (over two consecutive weekends) features the work of 47 individuals Himovitz represented at 1020 10th St.

Among them are Anne Gregory, Al Farrow, M. Louise Stanley, Kim Scott, Julian Faulkner, Michaele LeCompte, Margaret Maye, Stephanie Skalinsky, Fred Babb, Rebecca Goizon, Mick Sheldon, John Berger and Julia Couzens.

Husband-and-wife artists Michael Stevens and Suzanne Adan showed their work at Himovitz's very first gallery: the cleared-off walls of his family's house-contractor business in suburban Sacramento.

In 1985, when Himovitz opened his 10th Street gallery, he asked Adan to be a part of the inaugural show, which featured women artists.

Himovitz specialized in contemporary art – paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture and photographs – by California artists, particularly those living in this area. His gallery shared a space with the Jennifer Pauls Gallery.

"They both catered to narrative art," says Adan. "They had similar visions but a different stable of artists."

And while The Bee raved about the Himovitz Gallery's 1988 remodel, declaring it "Sacramento's most elegant gallery," comparable to "chi-chi, uptown galleries in San Francisco or Seattle," the room was over- shadowed by its colorful owner, says Adan.

"Michael was outgoing, really intelligent and articulate. He could charm the socks off people. He was warm, easygoing, and then he had the classy sophistication of how he dressed. He was stylish. He wore the latest clothes, very high-end fashions from Wilkes Bashford (in San Francisco.) We would look at the price tags and think, 'Whoa!' " Adan says.

"He had an air about him, and the art community hasn't been the same since he passed. There's been a real void. He got out into the community and pulled the community into the gallery. He supported so many organizations and causes, and I don't see other gallery owners doing that."

Neath booked "1020" into the new Temporary Contemporary Gallery at 1616 Del Paso Blvd. It's the very same place to where Himovitz's partner, Charles Miller, relocated the Michael Himovitz Gallery from 1997 to 2001.

A companion show to "1020" is "My Side of the Street," the photography of Michael Himovitz's son, Lucas, at Archival Framing, the gallery and frame shop owned by Neath.

"I loved Michael so much," she says. "He's the reason I'm in this business. I never took an art class, but he helped me start the gallery."

Likewise, Himovitz encouraged one of his young patrons with a trust fund to open an art gallery.

Lynda Jolley, now co-owner of JayJay Gallery in east Sacramento, was in her early 20s and in college when a friend took her to Himovitz's midtown gallery.

"I started collecting from him, and he insisted I open a gallery. I was so young and naive that I opened a gallery," says Jolley, whose first art space was Big Hair, Big Art – part hair salon, part gallery.

"He had a passion for art like nobody's business. He was the epitome of a schmoozer. He could go into a room and light it up, and you never felt he was tired of being there, sick of the hustle. When he was gone, the gallery was never the same. That place was Michael, and he loved his artists."

Himovitz traveled frequently, and wherever he went, he trumpeted the artists his gallery represented. He arranged for art exchanges with galleries in Japan, Belgium and France.

A few months before his death, Himovitz told The Bee: "Artists need people like me – someone to show them, to talk about them, to make people interested in them, to believe in them."

"Michael never signed a contract with his artists," says Neath. "He was all about their career and getting them national, international, exposure.

"He was the most charming thing in the world. He took kids around the gallery and talked to them about art. You could walk in with artwork under your arm and see him without an appointment. If you saw an $8,000 painting you wanted, and you worked at McDonald's, he'd say, 'OK, I'll take $25 a month.' "