Gertrude stein wikipedia the free encyclopedia

Gertrude Stein February 3, — July 27, was an American writer who spent most of her life in France, and who became a catalyst in the development of modern art and literature. Her life was marked by two primary relationships, the first with her brother Leo Stein , from Gertrude and Leo , and the second with Alice B. Toklas , from until Stein's death in Gertrude and Alice.

Stein shared her salon at 27 rue de Fleurus, Paris, first with Leo and then with Alice. Throughout her lifetime, Stein cultivated significant tertiary relationships with well-known members of the avant garde artistic and literary world. Stein had a gregarious nature, and a wealth of modern paintings, and modern friends, that attracted many to her, and to her salon in Paris.

What was gertrude stein most famous for

For example, Stein was friends with "up and coming" artists Matisse and Picasso in the early s [1] , writers Thornton Wilder and Ernest Hemingway in the 20s [2] , and with the American GI's in the 40s. Each period marked Stein's connections with young, and in many cases, brilliantly talented and artistic people at the center of contemporary developments and events.

Her writing reflects, or in the case of The Autobiography , reflects on each decade. Gertrude Stein, the youngest of a family of five children, was born in in Allegheny, Pennsylvania , [4] near Pittsburgh , to well-educated German-Jewish immigrant parents. Stein family portrait image of Gertrude at between two and three years old four years old Her father, Daniel Stein, was an executive with a railroad, whose prudent investments in streetcar lines and real estate had made the family wealthy.

When Gertrude was three years old, the Steins moved for business reasons first to Vienna Stein children in Vienna, with governess and tutor and then to Paris.