Stuart Klein died peacefully on April 24, 2023, at Northern Duchess Hospital in Rhinebeck, NY following a brief unexpected illness. As his mother Lillian used to say, Stuart came to Woodstock in 1976 to attend his sister’s wedding and never left. He lived in his mother’s home, caring for her in later years, while slowly turning the house into an uncompromising personal statement of art, assemblage and curated “stuff!” He was a self-described “artistic hermit” and Expressionist painter, collagist, and lithographer with devoted collectors around the country.
\Born in 1942 in New York, Stuart’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 NH, 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.”
On June 10, 2023, his Woodstock friends hosted a wonderful memory show of Stuart’s art with friends and family hanging pieces from their collections at a private studio space. A fitting tribute to a longstanding Woodstock artist, friend, and character. As one of his oldest friends said, “he helped liberate me from a life of the ‘normal’”.
He is survived by his sister Jill, her husband Steve, nieces Katy and Molly, brother Warren, his wife Hong, partner William, and a host of friends around the world.
Thanks to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in NYC, Northern Duchess Hospital, and Hudson Valley Hospice for helping take care of Stuart. He will be missed.
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