Michael Klein is part of a group of American realist painters leading a movement hearkening back to the Renaissance and French Academic traditions. Klein has had five solo exhibitions in the Unites States from 2008-2015. He also participated in the American Chinese Oil Painting Artist League (ACOPAL) an exhibition held at the World Art Museum in Beijing. He and his wife started American Painting Video Magazine in 2010, an online video production which has been viewed in over one hundred and thirty countries throughout the world. His work has been published in numerous magazines such as Fine Art Connoisseur, American Artist Magazine and American Arts Quarterly. Recently, Klein was awarded the prestigious William F. Draper Grand Prize at the Portrait Society of America’s annual portrait conference. Born in 1980, Klein was nineteen when he began his serious training in classical ateliers. His first teacher was Richard Whitney. One of New Hampshire's most prominent portrait painters, and a pupil of R.H. Ives Gammell. Klein continued studying in Minneapolis at the former atelier Lack, founded by Richard Lack, a classical painter whose efforts were in part responsible for the revival of traditional painting in the United States. Seeking to broaden his education, Klein began studying at the Art Students League of New York, most notably under the tutelage of the late Nelson Shanks. In 2002, Klein entered what would become his final school, the Water Street Atelier (now Grand Central Atelier), where he apprenticed under founder Jacob Collins until 2005.