![]() ![]() It is both a novel and an autobiography, and the careful selection and presentation of specific facts and events turn it into a quasi-fictional construction in the spirit of Goethe's autobiography, appropriately called Dichtung und Wahrheit - or "fiction and truth". But it never forgets to pay the most enduring tribute to the hostess of the show - Gertrude Stein herself, as seen through the eyes of her lifelong companion, Alice B. ![]() The guest list in her novel is exquisite. Matisse, Hemingway, Picasso, Apollinaire. ![]() ![]() A woman of exceptional self-confidence, she conquered a world of machismo and made her own creativity the starting point for a whole generation. Whoever is in love with the painters and writers who frequented Paris during the first decades of the 20th century must read Gertrude Stein's brilliant account of the era. Well, I can't really say if Gertrude Stein ever looked like Picasso's portrait of her in real life, but in my imagination, there is no other way to see her, exception made for Man Ray's photograph of her in front of the painting which is a brilliant double portrait of the grand lady through two artist lenses: Yes, he said, everybody says that she does not look like it but that does not make any difference, she will, he said." "After a while I murmured to Picasso that I liked his portrait of Gertrude Stein. ![]()
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