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February 3: Gertrude Stein

lawrencebush
February 3, 2011

Gertrude-Stein-002Writer and patron of the arts Gertrude Stein was born on this date in 1874 into a wealthy family in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. She was a psychology student at Radcliffe, where she became interested in stream-of- consciousness writing, and she also spent two years in medical school at Johns Hopkins. From 1903 to 1914 Stein lived in Paris and conducted an artist salon with her brother Leon Stein, an art critic. As collectors they acquired works by Picasso, Matisse, Bonnard, Gaugin, Cezanne, Renoir, Delacroix and numerous great painters, some of whom made regular appearances at the salon. During this time, Stein also began to write for publication and met her lifelong lover, Alice B. Toklas; The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Stein’s best-known work, was published in 1933. Although both women were Jewish, they managed to stay in occupied France throughout World War II. In fact, Stein was politically conservative, a lifelong Republican and an opponent of the New Deal; she even advocated before the war that Adolf Hitler be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for “removing all elements of contest and struggle from Germany.” Yet her avant-garde literary style and forthright identity as a lesbian endeared her to the feminist movement and the 1960s counterculture. Stein died from stomach cancer in Neuilly-sur-Seine at the age of 72 on July 27, 1946, and was interred in Paris in Père Lachaise Cemetery.

“If it can be done, why do it?” —Gertrude Stein