Mina Loy was born in London, England, on December 27, 1882. She was the eldest of three daughters of Sigmund and Julia Bryan Lowy. At 17, her father sent her to study art in Munich. When she returned to London, Loy studied with painter Augustus John and exhibited in student shows where she met her first husband, Hugh “Stephen” Oscar William Haweis. In 1903, she moved to Paris to continue her studies and married Haweis that December. Loy and Haweis met many emerging modernist artists and writers, including Gertrude and Leo Stein, who introduced them to Guillaume Apollinaire and Pablo Picasso. They exhibited in the annual Salon d’Automne in 1906 alongside the works of Robert Delaunay and Paul Cézanne.
