Gertrude Stein (1874 – 1946) was an American woman of letters and feminist, who spent most of her life in France and contributed greatly to the development of modern art and literature.
Anti-conformist
Gertrude Stein was born on February 3, 1874 on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, United States. She is the fifth child of a wealthy Jewish family from Germany, daughter of Amelia and Daniel Stein. During Gertrude's early childhood, the Stein family traveled to Vienna and Paris, to introduce their children to European culture, before returning to settle in Oakland, California.
Amelia Stein dies when her daughter is 14, Daniel three years later. The eldest of the family, Michael, takes over the family business and sends Gertrude and her sister Bertha to Baltimore, to live with relatives. Gertrude studied at Raddcliffe College and Harvard. There she meets the psychologist William James, who becomes her mentor. Under his impulse, she begins a medical degree at Johns-Hopkins University, which she will not finish; these years in a very masculine and paternalistic universe are hard to live with. She understands that she does not want to conform to the classic image of women.
Artist and collector
In 1903, Léo Stein, her brother, moved to Paris and Gertrude joined him a year later, both hoping to work in the artistic field. Collectors, their styles differ:Léo is rather traditional while Gertrude helps to promote modern art, the cubists, Picasso. For 15 years, nearly 600 paintings passed through the rich Stein collection and their apartment in Paris became a center of avant-garde culture. In 1907, Gertrude met Alice B. Toklas, Léo's secretary, with whom she shared her life until her death. This relationship, among other divergences, notably artistic, completes the blurring of brother and sister.
Between 1906 and 1908, Gertrude Stein wrote The Making of the Americans , one of his major works, which his brother disapproves of and, in 1914, they stop sharing an apartment and seeing each other. When war broke out, Gertrude and Alice got involved in supplying and transporting the wounded. After the war, Gertrude resumed her writing and her activity as a collector. In 1933, she had success with The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas which tells the story of the Stein collection while obscuring the role of his brother.
During the Second World War, the two women fled Paris and took refuge under the protection of their friend Bernard Faÿ, director of the National Library of Vichy. At the suggestion of this friend, she translated several of Pétain's speeches into English, but stopped doing so in 1941.
Gertrude Stein died on July 27, 1946, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, of stomach cancer. She left many writings, poems and art criticism.