Biography
MINA LOY was born in London in 1882 and began her artistic career as painter; she was influenced by Impressionism and achieved success in the Parisian art world before turning to poetry and other forms of visual art, including lampshades and “junk collages.” She was at the heart of the modernist movement (as well as Dada, Futurism, and Surrealism) and had close friendships with Djuna Barnes and Gertrude Stein, among many others. Her frank and rigorously experimental writing earned her both praise and censure, as did her unconventional life: she spent many years living in Greenwich Village and on the Bowery, befriending bums, drunks, and other down-and-outs. Her work has recently been collected in The Lost Lunar Baedeker (FSG) and Stories and Essays of Mina Loy (Dalkey Archive). She died in 1966 in Aspen, Colorado.
