Loy, Mina

Mina Loy, the modernist poet, painter, playwright, actress, and designer of lampshades, lived in Europe during the height of the Futurist, Dada, and Surrealist movements. Her talent, intellect, and exceptional beauty made her one of the central figures of the literary and artistic avant garde who later gathered around Alfred Stieglitz, Walter Conrad Arensberg, and Alfred Kreymborg in New York. Although Loy was a multi-gifted woman, her fame largely rests with her poetry, which is daring in its technical experimentation and feminist in its exploration of female oppression. Two collections of her poems were published during her lifetime, Lunar Baedecker (Paris: Contact Editions, 1923) and Lunar Baedeker & Time-Tables (Highlands, N.C.: Jargon, 1958); another collection, The Last Lunar Baedeker (Highlands, N.C.: Jargon, 1982), appeared posthumously.

Mina Loy, the eldest daughter of Sigmund and Julia Bryan Lowy, was born in London on December 27, 1882. She went to Munich in 1899 to study art with Angelo Jank and during this time shortened her name from Mina Gertrude Lowy to Mina Loy. In 1901-1902 she studied painting in England with Augustus John and met Stephen Haweis, whom she married in Paris on December 31, 1903. The couple lived and painted in Paris for the next three years and frequented the salon of Gertrude Stein. They moved to Florence in 1906, but their marriage collapsed in 1913 and Haweis left for Australia and the South Seas. At about the same time Loy probably had affairs with Filippo Marinetti and Giovanni Papini and her poetry, which reflected her interest in the Futurists, first began to appear in print. Loy came to New York in 1916, worked in a lampshade studio, acted in the Provincetown Theatre, and associated with the poets who published in Others . In New York City she met Arthur Cravan, whom she married in Mexico City in 1918 after obtaining a divorce from Haweis. Soon thereafter Cravan disappeared in Mexico and his body was later found in the desert.

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