Baya Mahieddine was a Kabyle girl born with the name of Fatma Haddad. She was born in a 1931 in an Algiers suburb and was raised by her grandmother after she was orphaned at age five. At age 11, she was taken in as a servant by a Frenchwoman living in Algiers named Marguerite Caminat, who was herself an art collector and immediately recognized Baya’s artistic talent in the clay figurines that she would craft.
She was entirely self-taught and never received classical artistic training. Yet, with the help of Caminat’s connections to the art scene in France, Baya was able to travel across the Mediterranean to Paris to host her first exhibition in 1947 in Aimé Maeght’s gallery.
This is where her influence on artists such as Picasso is first noted. Picasso’s interest and fascination with African tribal art (and masks in particular) is well known. His graphic cubist style is attributed in part to his curiosity in traditional African forms of representation, at that time presented in Europe in the form of curios and artifacts rather than artworks. Mahyeddine was an exception to this. She was not creating tribal curiosities, but allowing her environment and imagination to shape her work.
Inspired by her spontaneity and natural talent, Picasso invited her to work with him in 1948. She was the elusive ‘untaught’ artist that gave Picasso fresh perspective. Picasso’s Women of Algeria series is said to be inspired by Mahyeddine, although it was painted after their time spent working together. Just as the young Mahyeddine’s influence on Picasso is evident, his influence is felt in many of her works. According to Sotheby’s ‘Picasso nurtured Baya’s aesthetic – particularly her use of color and line, while Baya’s cultural vitality served as creative lifeblood for Picasso’.
Like Picasso, Andre Breton was greatly inspired by Baya’s work. He found the bold colors and strange figures of her works revealed surrealist and dream-like qualities. He defined her work as Surrealism, and this view was widely held for a long time. Modernist critics used surrealist ideas of dream-like figures and the fascination with ‘naive’ art as a lens through which to view Mahyeddine’s work. This mindset is attributed to the problematic viewpoints at the time, which were ‘dominated by orientalism and the exoticisation of the world that Baya, the woman and artist, came from’.
But the artist refused to define herself using the terminology of the Western canon. She created work that was deeply personal, rooted in her childhood and her home. As Sana Makhoul asks in her research paper on the artist, ‘Why do we have to define and categorize artwork from non-Western cultures by imposing on them Western definitions and terminology?’
Baya’s paintings are cascading scenes void of sharp edges, rendered abstract in her fluid and repetitive compositions. Her most recurrent motifs were women, animals, and vegetation, as in the example of her 1947 painting, Femme robe jaune cheveux bleus (Woman with blue hair in a yellow dress), where she depicts a woman with two peacocks in place of her ovaries and a red butterfly over her vulva. Her primary medium was gouache, which is a more opaque, textured type of watercolor that allows for deeper colors and more striking scenes. The devoted repetition of motifs–women and nature–indicated that she was inspired by personal memories and experiences that were informed by her Algerian roots. When asked about her work, Baya explained that she composed happy scenes as a therapy for the unhappiness in her life.
One of Algeria’s most celebrated artists, Baya Mahieddine is famous for the iconic work that would inspire Picasso to paint a collection called Women of Algeria. As a self-taught artist, Baya retained the connection to ‘tribal’ art that so fascinated the Western world, and actively rejected any form of classification, instead drawing on personal memories and experiences.
References
https://theculturetrip.com/africa/algeria/articles/baya-mahieddine-the-young-artist-who-inspired-picasso/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baya_(artist)
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