In 1959, Marcel Duchamp curated Mina Loy’s final solo show. The exhibition at Bodley Gallery in New York City featured Loy’s groundbreaking collages from the 1940s and early 1950s, which were made of rags, cardboard, egg cartons, and other discarded materials picked up around the Bowery, where the artist had lived.
Called “shocking and macabre” by a contemporary reviewer from Arts Magazine, Loy’s works predated the celebrated assemblages of artists like Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.
If you’re asking yourself why you haven’t heard of Loy before, you’re not alone, but a new exhibition and forthcoming book honor the overlooked 20th-century female artist.
