Gertrude Stein – 1874-1946

A former medical student, Stein moved to Paris with her brother Leo early in the 20th century and established a salon that became a meeting place for emerging writers and artists, including, after World War I, expatriate Americans such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was Stein who labeled the writers and artists who had passed through the crucible of the Great War the “Lost Generation.” An important avant-garde writer, Stein was a mentor and surrogate mother to that Lost Generation. She was also an important collector of modern art.