Gertrude Stein
27 Rue de Fleurus in Paris was the center of a thriving artistic salon hosted by writer Gertrude Stein. Stein presided over a rotating group of what she termed “the lost generation” of artists and writers disillusioned in the wake of World War I. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania in 1875, Stein grew up in a wealthy household, living in Vienna, Paris and California during her childhood. She went to Radcliffe College in 1893, studying with psychologist William James. She later enrolled in medical school at Johns Hopkins, but left for Paris in 1903 before finishing her degree. Stein and her brother Leo took up residence in an apartment and began to cultivate young artists such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. In 1907 she met Alice Toklas, an American woman who frequented the Rue de Fleurus salon, and Toklas would become her companion and secretary until Stein’s death. They helped in the war effort during WWI, delivering supplies around Paris in a Ford truck, and Stein was awarded a medal of recognition by the French Government. Stein wrote extensively - prose, poetry, art criticism, opera librettos and memoirs. Her abstract writing style used repetition to highlight rhythmic word patterns, and action was mostly in the present tense. Stein’s writing did not gain wide attention until her more linguistically straightforward memoir The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was published in 1933. The book was a bestseller and prompted a very successful university lecture tour in the United States during 1934. During WWII Stein and Toklas moved to the French countryside in a successful effort to evade persecution by the Nazis. After the war they moved back to Paris, where they welcomed young American soldiers to their home. Gertrude Stein died in 1946 of stomach cancer.
