Stein studied painting autodidactically, before he visited classes at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan.
He also painted several pictures during his World War II service as a soldier of the Eighth Air Force and the Ninth United States Army.
After he returned to the United States in November 1945, he participated in night classes at the New School for Social Research, due to the benefit of the GI educational bill.
[2] They moved to Los Angeles in 1946, where he worked in the film studios, and visited courses at Chouinard School of Art in the evenings.
He died in April 2009, and left his wife Gertrude and his two daughters Elizabeth Frame of Boulder, Colorado, and Anne Stein of Los Angeles.