Baya Algerian, 1931-1998

BAYA (1931 - 1998) the Algerian artist, was born Fatima Haddad. Having lost both parents at the age of five, she was raised by her grandmother until the age of eleven. Unable to keep up with costs, shebegan working as a live-in servant for Marguerite Caminat, a Frenchwoman whose personal art collection included works by such notable modernists as Braque and Matisse. Caminat saw the artistic potential in her and encouraged her to develop her skills, remarking on the enthusiasm with which she modeled figures out of clay.

She held her first exhibition in Paris at La Galerie Maeght in 1947, producing many ceramic works and becoming one of Picasso’s muses for his series of ‘Women of Algiers’. Although she became known in France, she remained based in Algeria.

Her creations were rendered from deep and personal experiences that were primarily rooted in her childhood and home, where she remained even in times of turmoil such as the Algerian Revolution of 1954-1962. At a time when many European artists continued to paint women in exoticized and sexualized ways, Baya populated her canvases with expressive, joyfully rendered women that complicated stereotypes about North African conservatism as well as norms of female representation. 

Baya’s works were included in a major retrospective Baya Mahieddine Exhibition at the Sharjah Art museum, UAE (2021) and she was included in the exhibition 100 Masterpieces of Modern and Contemporary Art: The Barjeel Collection, Museé de l’Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris (2017). works can still be seen in the collections of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Algiers; the Arab World Institute in Paris; the Picasso Museum in Antibes; the Collection of Art Brut in Lausanne, and the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah.