Virgins Plus Curtains Minus Dots

Born Mina Gertrude Löwy in London, to a family that had emigrated from Budapest in 1870, Mina Loy studied art in London, Munich, Paris, and Florence, where Gertrude Stein, Picasso, and other expatriates encouraged her avant-garde painting and writing. Heavily influenced by futurism while she was living in Paris, Loy’s poetry, largely produced between 1913 and 1924, was daring in both form and theme; yoking formal experimentality to modernist intellectual concerns, unabashed sexuality, and feminist critique, Loy won recognition as a distinctive voice in the Anglo-American modernist scene. In addition to her poetry, Loy designed lampshades, made collages, and wrote a novel, Insel (published posthumously, 1991). She moved permanently to America in 1936 to be with her daughters, eventually settling in Aspen, Colorado.