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Picasso: Stein
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)
Gertrude Stein, 1906
Oil on canvas; H. 39-3/8, W. 32 in. (100 x 81.3 cm)
Bequest of Gertrude Stein, 1946 (47.106)
©1999 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Along with her brother Leo, Gertrude Stein was among the first Americans to respond with enthusiasm to the artistic revolution in Europe in the early years of the twentieth century. The weekly salons she held in her Paris apartment became a magnet for European and American artists and writers alike, and her support of Matisse, Braque, Gris, and Picasso was evident in her many acquisitions of their work. For Picasso, this early patronage and friendship was of major importance.
Picasso's portrait of the expatriate writer was begun in 1905, at the end of his Harlequin period and before he took up Cubism. Stein is shown seated in a large armchair, wearing her favorite brown velvet coat and skirt. Her impressive demeanor and massive body are aptly suggested by the monumental depiction.
In her book "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" (1932), Stein described the making of this picture: "Picasso had never had anybody pose for him since he was sixteen years old. He was then twenty-four and Gertrude had never thought of having her portrait painted, and they do not know either of them how it came about. Anyway, it did, and she posed for this portrait ninety times. There was a large broken armchair where Gertrude Stein posed. There was a couch where everybody sat and slept. There was a little kitchen chair where Picasso sat to paint. There was a large easel and there were many canvases. She took her pose, Picasso sat very tight in his chair and very close to his canvas and on a very small palette, which was of a brown gray color, mixed some more brown gray and the painting began. All of a sudden one day Picasso painted out the whole head. I can't see you anymore when I look, he said irritably, and so the picture was left like that."
Picasso actually completed the head after a trip to Spain in fall 1906. His reduction of the figure to simple masses and the face to a mask with heavy lidded eyes reflects his recent encounter with African, Roman, and Iberian sculpture and foreshadows his adoption of Cubism. He painted the head, which differs in style from the body and hands, without the sitter, testimony to the fact that it was his personal vision, rather than empirical reality, that guided him in his work. When someone commented that Stein did not look like her portrait, Picasso replied, "She will."
(From: http://www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_art/viewOne.asp?dep=21&viewmode=0&item=47.106)
1903 ging sie mit ihrem Bruder Leo nach Europa. In Paris eröffnete sie einen Salon, der sich zu einem Zentrum der schriftstellerischen Avantgarde entwickelte. Sie gehörte der neuen revolutionären Generation an. Sie war jung genug, die Künstler zu verstehen, reif genug, um sie zu fördern und vermögend genug, um die Bilder zu kaufen. Und so kaufte sie viele Bilder der damals noch verkannten Genies: Cézanne, Monet, Renoir, Daumier, Gauguin.
Ihr erster Kauf von dem noch unbekannten Henri Matisse, Femme au chapeau 1905, begründete ihre Freundschaft mit ihm. 1906 lernte sie Picasso kennen. Und obwohl ihr sein Bild Junges Mädchen mit dem Blumenkorb, das ihr Bruder Leo kaufte, nicht gefiel, sollte sie Picasso auf dem Weg seines Berühmtwerdens begleiten. Beide Maler, Matisse und Picasso, begegneten sich das erste Mal in Gertrude Steins „Salon“. Matisse beäugte die Freundschaft Steins mit Picasso argwöhnisch. Picasso portraitierte Gertrude Stein - denkend und lauschend, wichtig und gewichtig (das Bild hängt heute im Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City).
In Steins mondänen Zusammenkünften traf man auch Max Jacob, Alfred Jarry, Guillaume Apollinaire, André Salmon, Georges Braque. Man Ray photographierte Picasso. Man lebte die Freundschaften und die Künstler ließen sich gegenseitig inspirieren: Picasso liebte die Gedichte der Poeten und diese entflammten sich an seinen Bildern.
1907 lernte Stein ihre Lebensgefährtin Alice B. Toklas kennen. 1909 veröffentlichte sie ihr erstes Buch Three Lives im Selbstverlag. Mit der Textsammlung Tender Buttons (1914) wendete sie sich verstärkt der experimentellen Literatur zu.
Gertrude Stein: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas -
So bekennt Toklas schon auf der dritten Seite, daß sie in ihrem
Leben genau drei Genies kennenlernte: Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso
und Alfred Whitehead