Leo Stein was an American art collector and critic. He was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania

Allegheny, Pennsylvania

Allegheny City was a Pennsylvania municipality located on the north side of the junction of the Allegheny and Ohio rivers, across from downtown Pittsburgh. It was annexed by Pittsburgh in 1907...

, the older brother of Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...

. He became an influential promoter of 20th-century paintings. Beginning in 1892, he studied at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

, for two years. The following year, he traveled the world with his cousin, Fred. In 1897, he transferred to Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University

The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...

 in Baltimore, Maryland, where he graduated with a bachelor of arts

Bachelor of Arts

A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 degree in 1898.

Stein spent a number of years living in Paris with his sister, however, in 1914, the two split due to Leo's infatuation with a woman he described as a kind of abnormal vampire. Stein returned to America to work as a journalist but eventually settled near Florence, Italy, with his long-time love interest, Nina Auzias. They eventually married in 1921.

Stein died of cancer in 1947 in Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

. Auzias committed suicide two years later.

Publications

• Stein, Leo. Appreciation: Painting, Poetry, and Prose. 1947. Reprint. University of Nebraska Press, 1996.
• Stein, Leo. The A-B-C of Aesthetics. New York: Boni & Liveright, 1927.
• Stein, Leo. "Pablo Picasso." The New Republic (April 23, 1924): p. 229-230.

Sources

• Wineapple, Brenda. Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein. London: Putnam, 1996.
• Four Americans in Paris: The Collections of Gertrude Stein and Her Family. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1970.

New York Times "The Moderns" http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/03/specials/stein-sister.html, 1996.