The Wanderings of the Little Blue Butterfly in Fairyland

Amalia Moscovitz was born in Budapest and raised primarily on the estate of her affluent, assimilated family in Alsókörtvélyes (today Hrušov, Slovakia). Anna Lesznai—her artistic pseudonym—became active in Budapest’s avant-garde salons as a teenager. She wove her many different media—painting, poetry, illustration, scholarship, folktales, and Hungarian embroidery (himzés)—into a coherent artistic-intellectual modernist aesthetic. In 1939, Lesznai fled Hungary for America, with her soon-to-be (third) husband, Tibor Gergely. There she taught pedagogical and applied arts at Wellesley College and elsewhere.