Leo Stein (art collector)
Leo Stein (born May 11, 1872 in Allegheny, today Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , † July 29, 1947 in Florence ) was an American art collector and critic. He was the older brother of Gertrude Stein . With it he promoted together from 1903 to 1913 patron of the arts , the Post-Impressionist and modern paintings of the 20th century and contributed significantly to enforce against which still claiming academicism in.
Life
Leo Stein was born on May 11, 1872 in Allegheny as the penultimate of five children into a wealthy family. The paternal grandparents, Michael and Hannah Stein, were Jews who emigrated from Germany and who had left Weickersgrüben near Graefendorf in Lower Franconia in 1841 with the aim of finding political freedom and economic development opportunities in America that were denied to them at home. Leo's father, Daniel Stein, married Amelia Keyser, who was also German-Jewish, in 1864. After staying in Vienna and Passy near Paris , Leo grew up with his siblings in California . When his father Daniel Stein also died in 1891, three years after his mother's death in 1888, the eldest son Michael became the guardian of the younger siblings. From 1892 Leo Stein studied for two years at Harvard University in Boston , (Massachusetts). The following year he went on a world tour with his cousin Fred, which took him to Japan and Egypt . In 1897 he studied at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and graduated with a "Bachelor of Arts" in 1898 from.
In 1900 Leo Stein moved to Europe , three years later his sister Gertrude followed him first to London , then to Paris . Leo attended the Académie Julian at times , but soon realized that his talent was not enough to become a painter himself. Financially independent by his father's inheritance, he looked for affordable modern art; then his friend, the Renaissance specialist Bernard Berenson , on a visit to Paris in 1903 asked him the momentous question: “Do you actually know Cézanne ?” When Stein replied in the negative, Berenson went to Ambroise Vollard's art dealership with him . Stein was delighted. He and his sister began to build up the legendary collection at 27 rue de Fleurus and opened a salon there , which developed into a center of the artistic avant-garde .
The siblings bought many pictures by then underrated artists such as Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet , Henri Matisse , Pierre-Auguste Renoir , Pablo Picasso and Paul Gauguin and welcomed visitors interested in art. Pablo Picasso with Fernande Olivier , Max Jacob , Alfred Jarry , Guillaume Apollinaire with Marie Laurencin , André Salmon and Georges Braque were guests of the Parisian artist and literary scene .
In 1913, Leo Stein left, who had become deaf at an early age and suffered from severe indigestion, which he iron fasting or by Fletchern tried to fight their apartment because it after four years "menage a trois" with Gertrude's girlfriend Alice B. Toklas no longer saw the possibility of living together and assessed his sister's writing as well as Cubism, which was establishing itself in painting, as inferior. The household effects and the art collection were shared. Leo kept the Renoirs, Gertrude the Picassos, and the pictures of Cézanne were split up. There was no longer any reconciliation. Leo settled in Settignano near Florence near his friend Bernard Berenson, who had lived there in the Villa I Tatti for a long time. He spent the time of the First World War in New York, where, afflicted by severe depression , he sought refuge in psychoanalysis , which, of course, he preferred to apply himself to himself. After the end of the war he returned to Italy; In 1921 he married his partner Nina Auzias, a former street singer .
After the outbreak of the Second World War , he decided, like his sister, who stayed in France, to stay in Italy, not knowing that Settignano would come between the battle lines of the Allies and the Germans in 1943. The American painter Maurice Sterne lamented that while the Berensons found refuge with an Italian nobleman, the Steins almost starved to death in Settignano. Nina lay helpless in bed with arthritis and Leo had to burn the furniture to warm the house a little. He had queued for hours for every crumb of bread, everything was rationed. In addition, the batteries in Leo's hearing aid were exhausted and replacements were not available. That had the advantage, of course, that the noise of the battle bothered him less in the basement of the house where they had to stay for days. A friend and neighbor of Leo, the painter Rudolf Levy , had been arrested; Leo and Nina lived in constant fear.
After the end of the war, Stein revived for a while. He found out about Gertrude's death from the newspaper. He summarized the aesthetic considerations of his life in the collection of essays Appreciation: Painting, Poetry, and Prose and died in 1947 shortly after its publication and only one year after his sister Gertrude, who was two years younger than her, and as a result of cancer surgery. He is buried in the Settignano cemetery. Nina Auzias committed suicide two years later.
Exhibition of the Stein family of collectors
In October 2011, an exhibition dedicated to the art collectors Gertrude, Leo, Michael and Sarah Stein opened at the Grand Palais in Paris. Until January 16, 2012, it showed around 200 exhibits under the title Matisse, Cézanne, Picasso… L'aventure des Stein , which were owned by the family of collectors.
Works
- The ABC of Aesthetics. Boni & Liveright, New York 1927.
- Appreciation: Painting, Poetry, and Prose. 1947. Reprint: University of Nebraska Press, 1996, ISBN 978-0-803-29236-9 .
literature
- Stefana Sabin : Gertrude Stein. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1996, ISBN 3-499-50530-4 .
- Linda Wagner-Martin: Favored Strangers. Gertrude Stein and Her Family. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ 1995, ISBN 0-8135-2169-6 .
- Brenda Wineapple: Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein. Putnam, London 1996, German: sister brother. Gertrude and Leo Stein. Arche, Zurich 1998, ISBN 978-3-716-02233-7 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Leo Stein in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ Weickersgrueben. alemannia-judaica.de, accessed on March 31, 2010 .
- ↑ Brenda Wineapple: Sister Brother Gertrude and Leo Stein , p. 24 f
- ↑ Brenda Wineapple: Sister Brother Gertrude and Leo Stein , p. 294
- ↑ Ulla E. Dydo: A Stein Reader , p. 563. Retrieved February 21, 2010 .
- ↑ Stefana Sabin: Gertrude Stein , Rowohlt, Reinbek 1996, p. 50 f
- ^ Reproduced from Linda Wagner-Martin: Favored Strangers. Gertrude Stein and Her Family , p. 262
- ↑ Brenda Wineapple: Sister Brother Gertrude and Leo Stein , p. 550
- ↑ Matisse, Cézanne, Picasso ... L'aventure des Stein , bonjourparis.com, accessed September 21, 2012
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Stein, Leo |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American art critic and art collector |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 11, 1872 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Allegheny, now Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 29, 1947 |
| Place of death | Florence |