Gertrude Stein(1874-1946)

Gertrude Stein was the fifth child in the Daniel and Amelia Stein family. She grew up in a trilingual environment, spending her childhood in Vienna and Paris, then living in California. She graduated from Radcliffe College and went to the Medical School at Johns Hopkins University for 2 years. She continued her medical studies in Europe, but traveling and writing eventually took over. Her first novel "Q.E.D." was written in New York, but was published only after her death under the title "Things As They Are".

Gertrude Stein lived in Paris for 40 years, becoming a patron of artists Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne, and others. She amassed an enormous collection of art, that is now displayed in major museums. Her 1906 portrait by Pablo Picasso was finished after more than 50 sittings. She experimented with stream-of-consciousness in her own deconstructive style, and by using words as rhythmical brush-strokes. She was called a "literary cubist", being compared to the cubist artists for her ability of projecting reality beyond reality. Her literary secretary, Alice B. Toklas, was a lifetime companion. They traveled in Spain together, while Stein worked on the book "Tender Buttons" (1914). During WWI Stein was driving her Ford and helping the wounded soldiers. She and Alice were both honored for this work.

After WWI Gertrude Stein became the center of the American expatriate community in Paris. She was the catalyst in the development of modern artists and writers. Her home was the meeting place for such artists and writers, as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Thornton Wilder and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Ernest Hemingway confessed on meeting Stein..."It was a vital day for me when I stumbled upon you." She was credited for dubbing them as "The Lost Generation".

"The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" (1933) became a best seller and turned Stein into a celebrity. Her lecture tour of the United States was a great success, and she was praised by Thornton Wilder, Sherwood Anderson, and Charles Chaplin. Back in Paris she went through changes of moving to a new apartment, and soon moving out of Paris before the Nazi occupation in WWII. Gertrude Stein and Alice, being both Jewish, barely escaped a concentration camp, protected by their French neighbors. They returned to Paris in 1944 and found the precious art collection untouched.

Her health declined and she was diagnosed with colon cancer. When rushed into emergency surgery her last words to Alice were: "What is the answer?" ...without a reply, "In that case...what is the question?"