GERTRUDE and ALICE and FRITZ and TOM

An Artful Adventure with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas
By Hans Gallas • Illustrations by Tom Hachtman

The book GERTRUDE AND ALICE AND FRITZ AND TOM: An Artful Adventure with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas by Hans Gallas with illustrations by Tom Hachtman has just been published.

The picture book is loosely based on a chapter in a memoir by Fritz Peters, BOYHOOD WITH GURDJIEFF. Peters and his brother Tom attended a boarding school outside of Paris in the mid-1920s run by the mystic George Gurdjieff. The boys would often visit Stein and Toklas.

GERTRUDE AND ALICE AND FRITZ AND TOM features one of their Thanksgiving visits with Stein and Toklas and the "perfect plan" that Stein drew up to introduce them to some of the historic sites of Paris. With Gertrude and Alice as their guides, some of the highlights of the tour include the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and Notre Dame in addition to the the art-filled apartment at rue de Fleurus and Alice’s cooking.

The boys were the nephews of Margaret Anderson who with Jane Heap founded one of the 20th century's most important literary magazines,The Little Review,(they were also the boys’ legal guardians.)

This is Gallas’s first book which developed out of his long-time interest in Stein and Toklas.  He lives in San Francisco and is a major collector of Stein and Toklas memorabilia some of which has been featured in exhibitions around the world, most recently as part of SEEING GERTRUDE STEIN at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, as well as INSIGHT & IDENTITY: Contemporary Artists and Gertrude Stein at the Stanford in Washington Gallery also in DC. He created gertrudeandalice.com in 2002, where he posts his blog.

The illustrator of the book is Tom Hachtman.  Tom has had pieces in Mad Magazine, The New Yorker, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Barron’s, The Soho News and the editorial page of the New York Daily News.  He is the author/ illustrator of GERTRUDE’S FOLLIES based on the comic strip he created for the Soho News. He has also published two other books, DOUBLETAKES and the sequel to GERTRUDE’S FOLLIES, FUN CITY.  Some of his works also appear in the SEEING GERTRUDE STEIN and INSIGHT and IDENTITY exhibitions. Tom lives in Point Pleasant Beach, NJ.

The book is published by GertrudeandAlice Editions, a company Gallas formed as a tribute to Stein’s and Toklas’s own self-publishing efforts in 1930 when they created Plain Edition which published five of Stein’s books.

Though designed as a children’s picture book, GERTRUDE AND ALICE AND FRITZ AND TOM is for all ages.  As Stein said: “We are always the same age inside.”

Contact: Hans Gallas fritzandtom@gertrudeandalice.com