Abstraction is a Western art movement marked by a departure from figurativeness or realism, the tradition followed since the Italian Renaissance that focused on three-point perspective and aimed to produce paintings that mimicked the experience of gazing through a window. Elements of abstraction, such as the flattening of perspective, had been present since the Impressionist movement of the late 19th century. However, by the time Stein reached Paris in 1903, artists such as Cézanne and Matisse had gone further, painting in planes or applying color and line in non-naturalistic ways. Stein, who found these painters’ work at the salon indépendent or at Ambroise Vollard’s shop, sometimes thought the paintings looked unfinished and was only convinced they were complete when she saw frames around them. Her daring approach as an art collector was evident in her willingness to spend time with paintings that she at first found strange, gradually training herself to appreciate them.

An autobiography is the account of a person’s life written by that person. An orthodox autobiography of Alice B. Toklas would have been written by Toklas herself. Instead, with Stein as the author, the work is really the autobiography of Stein and the biography of Toklas.