Stuart Klein was a beloved member of the greater artist community of Woodstock, New York.
As his mother Lillian used to say, Stuart went to Woodstock in 1976 to attend his sister’s wedding and never left. He lived in his mother’s home there, caring for her in later years, while slowly turning the house into an uncompromising personal statement of art, assemblage, and curated objects of aesthetic interest. He was a self-described “artistic hermit” and Expressionist painter, collagist, and lithographer with devoted collectors around the country.
Stuart Klein’s family moved from NYC to Detroit and back again in his early years. He attended the University of Michigan, was a very popular counselor for many summers in the 1960s at Camp Mowglis in New Hampshire, and made an indelible impression on everyone he met. He held strong opinions about art and life and tended to evoke similar responses from those around him—everyone has a “Stuart” story, and usually more than one.
Typical comments when people learned of his death—“irrepressible,” “eccentric,” “passionate,” “irreverent,” “idiosyncratic.”