Gertrude Stein
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American writer and is considered to have acted as a catalyst in the development of modernist art and literature. She spent most of her life in France.
Lost Generation
By the 1920s, her salon at 27 Rue de Fleurus, with walls covered by avant-garde paintings, attracted many of the great artists and writers including Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Henri Matisse, Sherwood Anderson, and Guillaume Apollinaire. She coined the term "Lost Generation" for some of these expatriate American writers. During this time she became friends with writer Mina Loy, and the two would remain lifelong friends. Extremely charming, eloquent, and cheerful, she had a large circle of friends and tirelessly promoted herself. Her judgments in literature and art were highly influential. She was Ernest Hemingway's mentor, and upon the birth of his son he asked her to be the godmother of his child. In the summer of 1931, Stein advised the young composer and writer Paul Bowles to go to Tangier, where she and Alice had vacationed.