Who's Who - Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was born in Pennsylvania, and moved to Paris after failing to complete her medical studies at Johns Hopkins. A circle of writers and artists centered around first Stein and her brother, Leo, and later Stein and her partner, Alice B. Toklas.

She met her lifelong partner Alice B. Toklas on the first day she arrived in Paris, they were inseperable until her death.

During World War I Stein and Toklas served as volunteers for the American Fund for the French troops. Stein ordered a Ford truck from the United States, learned how to drive, and with Alice delivered supplies to French hospitals. They called the truck, their first vehicle, “Auntie,” named for Stein’s sensible Aunt Pauline, “who always behaved admirably in emergencies.” To show friends their wartime efforts, they sent photographic postcards of themselves with “Auntie.” These were the first photographs documenting the two women at work as a couple. The French government awarded them the Médaille de la Reconnaissance Française for their service.

In a conversation with Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein said "All of you young people who served in the war...you are all a lost generation". The phrase depicted a generation, characterized by doomed youth, hedonism and creativity, that had been severely wounded by their experiences and horrors of the war.

After meeting Pablo Picasso in Paris, Stein became fascinated by Cubism,

which concentrated on the illumination of the moment. Stein tried to translate Cubism's abstraction and disruption of perspective into a prose form and present an object or an experience from every angle simultaneously. The effect was reinforced by minimal use of punctuation and sentences that seemed to have no end.

Stein’s lived out the second World War in southeastern France against the advisment of many. She was Jewish, American, homosexual, and a radically modern artist, making her a highly potential target of Nazi persecution. German soldiers billeted with the women on two different occasions. Stein explained her survival as a simple matter: the Germans never recognized Stein as a famous American writer.