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Mina Loy (born Mina Gertrude Löwy; 27 December 1882 – 25 September 1966) was a British-born artist, writer, poet, playwright, novelist, painter, designer of lamps, and
bohemian Bohemian or Bohemians may refer to: *Anything of or relating to Bohemia Beer * National Bohemian, a brand brewed by Pabst * Bohemian, a brand of beer brewed by Molson Coors Culture and arts * Bohemianism, an unconventional lifestyle, origin ...
. She was one of the last of the first-generation modernists to achieve posthumous recognition. Her poetry was admired by T. S. Eliot,
Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...
, William Carlos Williams, Basil Bunting,
Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
,
Francis Picabia Francis Picabia (: born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22January 1879 – 30November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism ...
, and Yvor Winters, among others. As stated by Nicholas Fox Weber in the ''New York Times'', "This brave soul had the courage and wit to be original. Mina Loy may never be more than a vaguely familiar name, a passing satellite, but at least she sparkled from an orbit of her own choosing."


Early life and education

Loy was born in Hampstead, London. She was the daughter of a Hungarian
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
tailor, Sigmund Felix Lowy, who had moved to London to evade persistent
antisemitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...
in Budapest, and a Christian, English mother, Julia Bryan. Loy reflected on their relationship, and the production of her identity, in great detail in her mock-epic ''Anglo-Mongrels of the Rose'' (1923–1925). The marriage of Lowy and Bryan was fraught. Unknown to Loy, as biographer
Carolyn Burke Carolyn Burke (born March 29, 1940) is an Australian-born American writer, translator, and author of four biographies. Her first was a life of the English poet Mina Loy, published in 1996 and reprinted in 2021. She has also written books about the ...
records, her mother married her father under the pressure of disgrace as she was already seven months pregnant with the child that would be Mina; this situation was mirrored later in Loy's life when she rushed into a marriage with Stephen Haweis after becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Lowy and Bryan had three daughters in total, with Mina being the oldest. As recorded extensively in both her poetry and writing, from ''Anglo-Mongrels of the Rose'' to late prose pieces, Loy describes her mother as overbearingly Evangelical Victorian. As Burke records: "Like most Evangelicals, for whom the imagination was a source of sin, Julia distrusted her child's ability to invent." In reference to her mother, Loy recalled that she was troubled by the fact of "the very author of my being, being author of my fear." Loy found it hard to identify with her mother, who not only punished her continually for her "sinfulness," but also espoused fervent support of the British Empire, rampant antisemitism (which included her husband), and nationalistic jingoism. Loy's formal art education began late in 1897 at St. John's Wood School where she remained for about two years. In retrospect, Loy called it "the worst art school in London" and "a haven of disappointment". Loy's father pushed for her to go to the art school in the hope that it would make her more marriageable. Around this time, Loy became fascinated with both Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Rossetti, and after much convincing was able to persuade her father to purchase her Dante's ''Complete Works'' and reproductions of his paintings as well as a red Moroccan leather-bound version of Christina's poems. She also became passionate about the Pre-Raphaelites, starting first with the work of
William Morris William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, architectural conservationist, printer, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He w ...
before then turning to Edward Burne-Jones (her favourite work of which, at the time, was ''Love Among the Ruins''). Loy had to be careful as to how she expressed herself due to her mother's control. For example, Loy described that when her mother found a drawing she had done of the naked Andromeda bound to a rock her mother, scandalised and disgusted, tore up the work and called her daughter "a vicious slut".


Studying in Germany and Paris

In 1900 Loy attended the Munich ''Künstlerinnenverein'', or the Society of Female Artists' School, which was connected with the fine art school of Munich University, it was there that she claimed she learned draughtsmanship. Upon returning to the stifling environment of her family home in London, after the relative freedom she found in Munich, Loy suffered from "headaches, respiratory problems, and generalized weakness" which was then diagnosed as
neurasthenia Neurasthenia (from the Ancient Greek νεῦρον ''neuron'' "nerve" and ἀσθενής ''asthenés'' "weak") is a term that was first used at least as early as 1829 for a mechanical weakness of the nerves and became a major diagnosis in North A ...
– "a catch-all term for a variety of psychosomatic complaints suffered by artistic or intellectual women and a few sensitive men" during that time period. Around the age of eighteen, Loy convinced her parents to allow her to continue her education in Paris with a chaperone – a woman called Mrs. Knight. After much persuasion, she was allowed to move to Montparnasse, which in 1902 had not yet been urbanised, and attend the
Académie Colarossi The Académie Colarossi (1870–1930) was an art school in Paris founded in 1870 by the Italian model and sculptor Filippo Colarossi. It was originally located on the Île de la Cité, and it moved in 1879 to 10 rue de la Grande-Chaumière in the ...
as an art student. Unlike the segregated classes at the Munich ''Künstlerinnenverein'', these art classes were mixed. It was here, through an English friend of a similar social standing named Madeline Boles, that Loy first came into contact with the English painter Stephen Haweis who Loy later described as enacting the "parasitic drawing-out of one's vitality to recharge, as it were, his own deficient battery of life." According to Burke's biography, Haweis was unpopular with his fellow students, being considered a "poseur," and Boles in particular took him under her wing. Haweis, whose father was the well-known Reverend H.R. Haweis and his mother
Mary Eliza Haweis Mary Eliza Haweis, née Joy (21 February 1848 – 24 November 1898) was a British author of books and essays, particularly for women and a Victorian scholar of Geoffrey Chaucer, illustrator and painter. As the daughter of genre and portrait pai ...
a writer who wrote, amongst other things, ''Chaucer for Children'': ''A Golden Key'', was an aesthete of sorts and "despite being very short he managed to condescend to his listeners from a height." He began to exert himself over Loy, recognising her beauty and desirability, and played the role of the misunderstood eccentric which led Loy to feel guilty for disliking him and distrusting him as he borrowed more and more money from her without paying her back. Later she would reflect that Haweis loomed over her and she became, in Loy's own words, "as sullenly involved as with my mother's sadistic hysterics." One night he convinced her to stay over and, in what she would later describe as a state of hypnosis, she was seduced by him. Waking up next morning in his bed, semi-naked, Loy was horrified and repulsed. A few months after this, she realised that she was pregnant, something which terrified her as it bound her, as she later described, even closer to "the being on earth whom she would have least chosen." Being only twenty-one, she faced a difficult situation and, fearing rejection from her family and disinheritance, which would leave her penniless, she sought her parents' approval to marry Haweis, which they agreed to due to his respectable social status as the son of a preacher. Reflecting on this in later life, and how her upbringing influenced her in the decisions she made, Loy remarked that "If anyone I disliked insisted upon my doing anything I was averse to I would automatically comply, so systematically had they obfuscated my instinct of self-preservation."


Paris, 1903–1906

Relocating to Paris, Haweis and Loy married there, in the 14th Arrondissement, on 13 December 1903 – Loy was twenty-one, and four months pregnant. Initially they agreed that it would be just a marriage of convenience, but Stephen became quickly more possessive and demanding. Instead of taking her husband's name, after their marriage she changed her last name from "Lowy" to "Loy." ''Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy'' (1996) biographer Carolyn Burke notes that " e anagrammatic shifts of Lowy into Loy and later Lloyd symbolize her attempts to resolve personal crises and chooses to refer to Loy as Mina – the name that stayed fixed as her surname varied." Starting in 1903 until 1904, after meeting the Englishman Henry Coles, Haweis began selling ''photographies d'art'', or fine art photography pieces, influenced by
Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Modern ...
style. The most notable commission of this time was the photographing of the recent works of
Auguste Rodin François Auguste René Rodin (12 November 184017 November 1917) was a French sculptor, generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was schooled traditionally and took a craftsman-like approach to his work. Rodin possessed a uniqu ...
which came about after Haweis met with Rodin himself. At that time, Loy was Haweis's favourite subject to photograph; this is something which Loy never commented on. As Haweis gained more contacts and work, Loy became increasingly isolated and heavily pregnant. Loy's first child, Oda, was born on 27 May 1903. The labour was hard, as recalled in the early poem "Parturition" (first published in ''The Trend'' 8:1, October 1914). The opening details:
I am the centre Of a circle of pain Exceeding its boundaries in every direction The business of the bland sun Has no affair with me In my congested cosmos of agony From which there is no escape ..ref name=":5" />
Whilst Loy was in labour through the night, Haweis was absent with his mistress. Loy records this in "Parturition" thus:
The irresponsibility of the male Leaves woman her superior Inferiority. He is running upstairs
Two days after her first birthday, Oda died of meningitis and Loy was left completely bereft with grief over the loss. A day or so after Oda's death Loy reportedly painted a (now lost) tempera painting ''The Wooden Mother'' in which she depicted two mothers with their children, one being a "foolish-looking mother holding her baby, whose small fingers are raised in an impotent blessing over the other anguished mother who, on her knees, curses them both with great, upraised, clenched fists, and her own baby sprawling dead with little arms and legs outstretched lifeless." Loy decided to enter the
Salon d'Automne The Salon d'Automne (; en, Autumn Salon), or Société du Salon d'automne, is an art exhibition held annually in Paris, France. Since 2011, it is held on the Champs-Élysées, between the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais, in mid-October. The ...
under the name "Mina Loy" (having dropped the "w" in Lowy) in 1905. That autumn she exhibited six watercolours and the following spring she exhibited two watercolours at the Salon des Beaux-Art of 1906. After the latter exhibition, Loy was written of favourably in the ''Gazette des Beaux-Arts'':
Mlle Mina Loy who, in her uncommon watercolours where Guys, Rops and Beardsley are combined shows us ambiguous ephebes whose nudity is caressed by ladies dressed in furbelows of 1855.
After this positive reception Loy was asked to become a ''sociétaire'' of the drawing category, which meant that her work could be exhibited without having to pass through a selection committee. This was a "vote of confidence" which, as biographer Burke recognises, "was an exceptional mark of recognition for an unknown Englishwoman of twenty-three". By 1906 Loy and Haweis had agreed to live separately. During this period of separation Loy was treated by a French doctor named Henry Joël le Savoureux for neurasthenia, which had worsened with the death of Oda and living with Haweis, and the pair embarked on an affair which would end with her becoming pregnant. This made Haweis jealous and precipitated their move to Florence, where there were fewer people who knew them.


Florence, 1906–1916

At first, Loy and Haweis moved into a ''villino'' located in
Arcetri Arcetri is a location in Florence, Italy, positioned among the hills south of the city centre. __TOC__ Landmarks A number of historic buildings are situated there, including the house of the famous scientist Galileo Galilei (called ''Villa Il G ...
, finding themselves in a large expatriate community. In the Spring of 1907 Haweis found a studio on the Costa San Giorgio in Oltrarno. On 20 July 1907, Loy gave birth to Joella Sinara. A few months before Joella's first birthday Loy was pregnant again, this time with the child of Haweis, and she was to give birth to a son named John Stephen Giles Musgrove Haweis on 1 February 1909. Joella was late learning to walk, which was later diagnosed as a type of infantile paralysis which caused her muscles to atrophy. Dreading that Joella's condition might be like the meningitis that killed Oda, Loy sought medical and spiritual support. This was one of her earliest, critical encounters with
Christian Science Christian Science is a set of beliefs and practices associated with members of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Adherents are commonly known as Christian Scientists or students of Christian Science, and the church is sometimes informally known ...
as she sought out a
practitioner Practitioner may refer to: *Health practitioner * Justice and public safety practitioner * Legal practitioner *Medical practitioner * Mental health professional or practitioner * Theatre practitioner Spiritual Practitioner *Solitary practitione ...
, who prescribed a treatment and told Loy to feed Joella beef broth and donkey's milk. After this succeeded in improving Joella's health, Loy began to attend church regularly. Around 1909, with the financial support of Loy's father, Loy and Haweis moved into a three-storey home on the Costa San Giorgio. The family had a nurse, Giulia, who helped raise the children and would later spend years being the children's sole support, and her sister Estere, who was the family cook. Once the children were toddlers, Loy spent increasingly less time with them and they were often cared for in the cooler climate of the mountains and Forte de Marmi in the summers. Burke speculates that this may have been a reaction to the overbearing intrusion of her own mother which led her to withdraw. Loy frequented the social gatherings held by socialite Mabel Dodge Luhan at the Villa Curonia and it was here that she met
Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
, her brother Leo Stein, and Alice B. Toklas. Loy was drawn to Gertrude and even got the opportunity to dine with her, Dodge, and Andre Gide. Gertrude would later recall that Loy, as well as Haweis, were amongst the few at that time who expressed serious interest in her work (she had not yet been widely recognised for her literary achievement). However, Gertrude recalls an incident where Haweis begged her to add two commas in exchange for a painting, which she did, but then later removed them; contrarily, Gertrude noted that "Mina Loy equally interested was able to understand without the commas. She has always been able to understand." In daughter Joella (née Sinara) Bayer's memoir, now part of the Mina Loy Estate, she reflected on her parents, saying:
My mother, tall, willowy, extraordinarily beautiful, very talented, undisciplined, a free spirit, with the beginning of too strong an ego; my father, short, dark, a mediocre painter, bad tempered, with charming social manners and endless conversation about the importance of his family.
According to Gillian Hanscombe and Virginia L. Smyers:
During their ten years in Florence, both Mina and Haweis took lovers and developed their separate lives. In 1913 and 1914, though she was coping with motherhood, a soured marriage, lovers, and her own artistic aspirations, Mina found time to notice and take part in the emerging Italian Futurist movement, led by Filippo Marinetti, whom Loy had a brief affair with, and to read Stein's manuscript: ''The Making of Americans''. Loy even showed some of her own art at the first Free Futurist International Exhibition in Rome. She became, also, at this time, a lifelong convert to
Christian Science Christian Science is a set of beliefs and practices associated with members of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Adherents are commonly known as Christian Scientists or students of Christian Science, and the church is sometimes informally known ...
.
In winter 1913, at Caffe Giubbe Rosse (an informal meeting place of those involved in Giovanni Papini's '' Lacerba)'' Loy's lodger friend and fellow artist, the American Frances Simpson Stevens, met Florentine artists
Carlo Carrà Carlo Carrà (; February 11, 1881 – April 13, 1966) was an Italian painter and a leading figure of the Futurist movement that flourished in Italy during the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to his many paintings, he wrote a number ...
and
Ardengo Soffici Ardengo Soffici (7 April 1879 – 19 August 1964) was an Italian writer, painter, poet, sculptor and intellectual. Early life Soffici was born in Rignano sull'Arno, near Florence. In 1893 his family moved to the latter city, where he stud ...
, who, with Papini, had joined forces with Marinetti's Futurists earlier that year. They soon began visiting Stevens on the Costa San Giorgio and through this connection Stevens and Loy met many other Italian artists. Soffici would later invite Loy and Stevens to exhibit their work in the First Free Futurist International Exhibition, to be held in Rome at the Sprovieri Gallery – Loy was the only artist representing Britain and Stevens the only North American. From 1914 until her departure for America in 1916, Loy was involved in a complicated love triangle between Papini and Marinetti – which she was to write about extensively in her poetry.


''Feminist Manifesto'' (c. 1914)

In 1914, while living in an expatriate community in Florence, Italy, Loy wrote her '' Feminist Manifesto''. A galvanising polemic against the subordinate position of women in society, the short text remained unpublished in Loy's lifetime.


New York, 1916

Disillusioned with the macho and destructive elements in
Futurism Futurism ( it, Futurismo, link=no) was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects suc ...
, as well as craving independence and participation in a modernist art community, Loy left her children, and moved to New York in winter 1916. Before arriving in New York Loy had already created a stir – most notably with the 1915 publication of her ''Love Songs'' in the first edition of '' Others.'' She became a key figure in the group that formed around ''Others'' magazine, which also included
Man Ray Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, although his t ...
, William Carlos Williams,
Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...
, and Marianne Moore. Loy soon became a well-known member of the
Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
bohemian circuit. Frances Stevens, who had stayed with Loy previously in Florence, helped Loy get a small apartment on West Fifty-seventh Street. Within days of being in New York Stevens took Loy to an evening gathering at Walter and Louise Arensberg's 33 West Sixty-seventh Street duplex apartment. As Loy's biographer Carolyn Burke describes:
'On any given evening the Arensbergs’ guests might include Duchamp’s friends from Paris: the painters
Albert Gleizes Albert Gleizes (; 8 December 1881 – 23 June 1953) was a French artist, theoretician, philosopher, a self-proclaimed founder of Cubism and an influence on the School of Paris. Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger wrote the first major treatise on ...
; his wife,
Juliette Roche Juliette Roche (1884–1980), also known as Juliette Roche Gleizes, was a French painter and writer who associated with members of the Cubist and Dada movements. She was married to the artist Albert Gleizes. Life She was born in 1884 to a weal ...
; Jean and Yvonne Crotti; and
Francis Picabia Francis Picabia (: born Francis-Marie Martinez de Picabia; 22January 1879 – 30November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimenting with Impressionism and Pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism ...
, as well as his wife, Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia; the composer
Edgard Varèse Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (; also spelled Edgar; December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965) was a French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm; he coine ...
; and the novelist and diplomat Henri-Pierre Roché. The new figures in American art and letters were also represented: at various times the salon attracted the artists
Man Ray Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, although his t ...
, Beatrice Wood,
Charles Sheeler Charles Sheeler (July 16, 1883 – May 7, 1965) was an American artist known for his Precisionist paintings, commercial photography, and the avant-garde film, '' Manhatta'', which he made in collaboration with Paul Strand. Sheeler is recognized ...
,
Katherine Dreier Katherine Sophie Dreier (September 10, 1877 – March 29, 1952) was an American artist, lecturer, patron of the arts, and social reformer. Dreier developed an interest in art at a young age and was afforded the opportunity of studying art in the ...
, Charles Demuth, Clara Tice, and Frances Stevens, as well as poets
Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...
, Alfred Kreymborg, William Carlos Williams, writers Allen and Louise Norton and Bob Brown, and art critic Henry McBride. And then there was the Baroness
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven Elsa Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven (née Else Hildegard Plötz; (12 July 1874 – 14 December 1927) was a German-born avant-garde visual artist and poet, who was active in Greenwich Village, New York, from 1913 to 1923, where her radical self ...
– artist’s model, poet, and ultra-eccentric.'
Early in 1917, Loy starred alongside William Carlos Williams, as wife and husband, in Alfred Kreymborg's one act play ''Lima Beans'' produced by the Provincetown Players. Loy contributed a (since lost) painting entitled ''Making Lampshades'' to the first exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists (formed in December 1916) at the Grand Central Palace New York which opened on 10 April 1917. With Walter Arensberg acting as the director and
Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...
as the head of the hanging committee, the show broke new ground in America as they ran with the slogan 'No jury, no prizes' as well as flouting tradition by displaying art works alphabetically, with no regard to reputation, and allowing anyone to enter for the price of $6. In 1917 she met the "poet-boxer"
Arthur Cravan Arthur Cravan (born Fabian Avenarius Lloyd; 22 May 1887 – disappeared 1918) was a Swiss writer, poet, artist and boxer. He was the second son of Otho Holland Lloyd and Hélène Clara St. Clair. His brother Otho Lloyd was a painter and photog ...
, a nephew of
Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
's wife, Constance Lloyd. Cravan fled to Mexico to avoid the draft; when Loy's divorce was final she followed him, and they married in Mexico City in 1918. Here they lived in poverty and years later, Loy would write of their destitution. When she found out that she was pregnant, she travelled on a hospital ship to
Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...
, "where she intended to wait for Cravan, but Cravan never appeared, nor was he ever seen again". Reportedly, "Cravan disappeared while testing a boat he planned to escape in. He was presumed drowned, but reported sightings continued to haunt Loy for the rest of her life." Cravan was lost at sea without trace; although some mistakenly claim that his body was found later in the desert (post-mortem, his life acquired even more epic proportions and dozens of stories proliferated). The tale of Cravan's disappearance is strongly anecdotal, as recounted by Loy's biographer, Carolyn Burke. Their daughter, Fabienne, was born in April 1919 in England. In a chapter of her largely unpublished memoir entitled ''Colossus'', Loy writes about her relationship with Cravan, who was introduced to her as "the prizefighter who writes poetry."
Irene Gammel Irene Gammel is a Canadian literary historian, biographer, and curator. She has published numerous books including ''Baroness Elsa'', a groundbreaking cultural biography of New York Dada artist and poet Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, and ...
argues that their relationship was "located at the heart of
avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretica ...
activities hich included boxing and poetry" Loy draws on the language of boxing throughout her memoir to define the terms of her relationship with Cravan.


Return to Europe and New York

After Cravan's death/disappearance, Loy travelled back to England, where she gave birth to her daughter, Fabienne. Loy would return to Florence and her other children. However, in 1916 she moved to New York, arriving on 15 October on the ship ''Duca D 'Aosta'', which set sail from the port of Naples. While in New York, she worked in a lamp-shade studio, as well as acting in the Provincetown Theater. Here she returned to her old Greenwich Village life, engaging in theatre or mixing with her fellow writers. During this period, some of Loy's poems ended up in small magazines such as ''Little Review'' and ''Dial''. She would mingle and develop friendships with the likes of
Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...
, Dadaist
Tristan Tzara Tristan Tzara (; ; born Samuel or Samy Rosenstock, also known as S. Samyro; – 25 December 1963) was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, comp ...
, and
Jane Heap Jane Heap (November 1, 1883 – June 18, 1964) was an American publisher and a significant figure in the development and promotion of literary modernism. Together with Margaret Anderson, her friend and business partner (who for some years was a ...
. Loy contributed writing to
Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...
's two editions of the journal ''
The Blind Man ''The Blind Man'' was an art and Dada journal published briefly by the New York Dadaists in 1917. History Henri-Pierre Roché and Marcel Duchamp, visiting from France, organized the magazine with Beatrice Wood in New York City. Mina Loy also ...
''. Appearing to be somewhat mystified by the new kinds of poetry being produced by Loy and her ilk, Pound remarked in a March 1918 piece for ''Little Review'', "In the verse of Marianne Moore I detect traces of emotion; in that of Mina Loy I detect no emotion whatsoever", seeing them both as demonstrating logopoeia, the writing of poetry without caring for its music or imagism. Instead, in their poetry, they performed "a dance of the intelligence among words and ideas and modification of ideas and characters." Pound concludes, "The point of my praise, for I intend this as praise...is that without any pretences and without clamours about nationality, these girls have written a distinctly national product, they have written something which would not have come out of any other country, and (while I have before now seen a great deal of rubbish by both of them) they are, as selected by Mr. Kreymborg, interesting and readable (by me...)." Loy travelled back to Florence, then New York, then back to Florence, "provoked by the news that Haweis had moved with Giles to the Caribbean". She brought her daughters to Berlin to enrol her daughter in dance school, but left them once more because she was drawn back to Paris by the art and literature scene. In 1923, she returned to Paris. Her first volume of poetry, ''Lunar Baedecker'', a collection of thirty-one poems, was published this year and was mistakenly printed with the spelling error "Baedecker" rather than the intended "Baedeker".


Lamp-designing

In 1936, Loy returned to New York and lived for a time with her daughter in
Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
. She moved to the
Bowery The Bowery () is a street and neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. The street runs from Chatham Square at Park Row, Worth Street, and Mott Street in the south to Cooper Square at 4th Street in the north.Jackson, Kenneth L. ...
, where she found inspiration for poems and found object assemblage art in the destitute people she encountered. On 15 April 1946, she became a naturalised citizen of the United States under the name "Gertrude Mina Lloyd", resident at 302 East 66 Street in New York City. Her second and last book, ''Lunar Baedeker & Time Tables'', appeared in 1958. In 1953, Loy moved to Aspen, Colorado, where her daughters were already living; Joella, who had been married to the art dealer of Surrealism in New York, Julien Levy, next married the
Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 20 ...
artist and typographer Herbert Bayer. She exhibited her found object art constructions in New York in 1951 and at the
Bodley Gallery The Bodley Gallery was an art gallery in New York City, from the late 1940s through the early 1980s. The Bodley specialized in contemporary and modern art. David Mann was director of the gallery during its heyday and Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Braun (a.k. ...
in 1959 in a show entitled 'Constructions' but she did not personally attend it.


Publishing

Loy is described as a "brilliant literary enigma" by Rachel Potter and Suzanne Hobson who outline a chronological map of her geographical and literary shifts. Loy's poetry was published in several magazines before being published in book form. The magazines that she was featured in include ''
Camera Work ''Camera Work'' was a quarterly photographic journal published by Alfred Stieglitz from 1903 to 1917. It presented high-quality photogravures by some of the most important photographers in the world, with the goal to establish photography as a ...
'', ''Trend'', ''Rogue, Little Review'', and ''Dial''. Loy had two volumes of her poetry published in her lifetime: ''The Lunar Baedeker'' (1923) and ''The Lunar Baedeker & Time-tables'' (1958). The ''Lunar Baedeker'' included her most famous work, "Love Songs", in a shortened version. It also included four poems included in ''Others'' in 1915, but their sexual explicitness had provoked a violent reaction, which made it difficult to publish the rest. Posthumously, two updated volumes of her poetry were released, ''The Last Lunar Baedeker'' (Highlands, NC, Jargon Society, 1982) and ''The Lost Lunar Baedeker'' (New York, Farrar Straus Girous, 1996 and Manchester, Carcanet, 1997), both edited by Roger L. Conover. The 1997 edition unaccountably omits Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose, a sequence of 21 poems, part semi-autobiographical, part social satire, arguably Loy's most accomplished work -- which, as a result of this omission, remains out of print. Songs to Joannes is in both editions. Her only novel, ''Insel'', was published posthumously in 1991. It is about the relationship between a German artist, Insel, and an art dealer, Mrs. Jones. Some critics have suggested that the novel is based on Loy's relationship with Richard Oelze. However, Sandeep Parmar has said that it is actually about Loy's relationship with her creative self.


Children

Loy had four children; her children by Haweis were Oda Janet Haweis (1903–1904), Joella Synara Haweis Levy Bayer (1907–2004) and John Giles Stephen Musgrove Haweis (1909–1923). Her only child with Cravan was Jemima Fabienne Cravan Benedict (1919–1997). Both Oda and John Giles died prematurely—Oda at the age of one year and John Giles at fourteen. Oda's birth took place on 27 May 1903, the labour of which is intimately related in the early poem "Parturition" (first published in ''The Trend'' 8:1, October 1914). One year later, two days after her first birthday, Oda died of meningitis and Loy was left completely bereft with grief over the loss. Giles, whose father Stephen Haweis picked him up from Florence in Loy's absence and took Giles without her consent to the Caribbean, died of a rare cancerous growth at the age of fourteen having never been reunited with his mother. According to Loy biographer Burke, the loss of Giles, following as it did upon the disappearance or death of Cravan, precipitated struggles with her mental health. As a result, Loy’s daughter Joella often had to care for her and prevent her from self-harming.


Death

She continued to write and work on her assemblages until her death at the age of 83, on 25 September 1966 from pneumonia in Aspen, Colorado. Loy is buried in Aspen Grove Cemetery.


Legacy

Recently in Argentina Camila Evia has translated and prepared an edition that includes the Feminist Manifesto and many poems by Mina Loy, making her legacy known in depth throughout Latin America.wordswithoutborders.org
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List of works


Poetry books

* ''Lunar Baedeker'' (Paris: Contact Publishing Co.,1923) * ''Lunar Baedeker and Time-Tables'' (Highlands, N.C.: Jonathan Williams Publisher argon 23 1958) * ''The Last Lunar Baedeker'', Roger Conover ed. (Highlands: Jargon Society argon 53 1982) * ''The Lost Lunar Baedeker'', Roger Conover ed. (Carcanet: Manchester, 1997)


Published prose

* ''Insel'', Elizabeth Arnold ed. (Black Sparrow Press, 1991) * ''Stories and Essays'', Sara Crangle ed. (Dalkey Press Archive ritish Literature Series 2011)


Critical exhibitions

* Salon d'Automne (Paris, 1905) – six watercolours *Salon des Beaux Arts (Paris, 1906) – two watercolours * First Free Futurist International Exhibition (Rome, 1914) * The New York Society of Independent Artists (Inaugural exhibition, 1917) * ''Constructions'' at
Bodley Gallery The Bodley Gallery was an art gallery in New York City, from the late 1940s through the early 1980s. The Bodley specialized in contemporary and modern art. David Mann was director of the gallery during its heyday and Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Braun (a.k. ...
, New York (April 14 – 25th 1959; her only solo show)


Notes


References

* Burke, Carolyn. ''Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy''. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996. * Gammel, Irene.
Lacing up the Gloves: Women, Boxing and Modernity
" ''Cultural and Social History'' 9.3 (2012): 369–390. *Kouidis, Virginia. ''Mina Loy: American Modernist Poet''. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1980. *Kuenzli, Rudolf. ''Dada (Themes and Movements)''. Phaidon Press, 2006. ncludes poetry by Mina and her relationship to several artists.*Loy, Mina. ''The Lost Lunar Baedeker''. Selected and ed. Roger Conover. 1996. *–––, and Julien Levy. ''Constructions, 14–25 April 1959''. New York:
Bodley Gallery The Bodley Gallery was an art gallery in New York City, from the late 1940s through the early 1980s. The Bodley specialized in contemporary and modern art. David Mann was director of the gallery during its heyday and Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Braun (a.k. ...
, 1959
OCLC 11251843
olo exhibition catalogue with commentary.*Lusty, Natalya.
'Sexing the Manifesto: Mina Loy, Feminism and Futurism'
, ''Women: A Cultural Review'', 19:3, pp. 245–260. 2008. *Prescott, Tara. A Lyric Elixir': The Search for Identity in the Works of Mina Loy'', Claremont Colleges, 2010. *Shreiber, Maeera, and Keith Tuma, eds. ''Mina Loy: Woman and Poet''. National Poetry Foundation, 1998. ollection of essays on Mina Loy's poetry, with 1965 interview and bibliography.*Parisi, Joseph. ''100 Essential Modern Poems by Women'' (The greatest poems written in English by women over the past 150 years, memorable masterpieces to read, reread, and enjoy). Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2008.


External links


Mina Loy
at
Electronic Poetry Center The Electronic Poetry Center (EPC), is an online resource for digital poetry. It was founded on July 10, 1994 by Loss Pequeño Glazier and Charles Bernstein, of the Poetics Program at SUNY-Buffalo, making it one of the oldest resources for poetr ...

Works by or about Mina Loy
at
HathiTrust HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locall ...

Works by or about Mina Loy
at
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

Works by or about Mina Loy
at
Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

Vorticist Portraiture in Mina Loy's ''Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose''
in ''Cordite Poetry Review''

– photographs, works, bibliography, and links
Mina Loy at the Modernist Journals Project
– examples of visual art *

' and

', ''Intimate Circles: American Women in the Arts'', Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...
, accessed 30 January 2008.
Mina Loy, "The Sacred Prostitute"
(in Spanish). Función Lenguaje.
''Mina Loy's 'Colossus' and the Myth of Arthur Cravan'' by Sandeep Parmar, Jacket 34, October 2007
* Mina Loy Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Loy, Mina Modernist women writers 1882 births 1966 deaths Artists from London British expatriates in Mexico British Army personnel of World War I British women artists Converts to Christian Science Writers from London English Christian Scientists English women poets Collage artists Women collage artists Futurologists English people of Hungarian-Jewish descent British feminist writers English feminists Feminist artists Proponents of Christian feminism English expatriates in France English expatriates in Germany English expatriates in Italy English expatriates in the United States 20th-century English poets 20th-century English women writers Burials in Colorado