Baya Mahieddine

“When I paint, I am happy and I am in another world.” Those were the words of the Algerian Modernist Baya Mahieddine (1931-98).

• Self‑taught Algerian artist who achieved recognition in Paris by age 16

• Worked across gouache and ceramics, blending Kabyle heritage and imagination

• The artist who influenced Picasso

Baya was born Fatima Haddad in 1931 in Bordj El Kiffan, Algeria, then known as Fort-de-l’Eau. Orphaned by age five, she was raised by her grandmother and later introduced to Marguerite Caminat, a French patron in Algiers who recognized her raw talent and provided art materials and encouragement.

At just 16, Baya held her first solo exhibition in Paris at Galerie Maeght in 1947. Her work caught the attention of surrealists like André Breton, and even Pablo Picasso reportedly admired her early gouaches.

Her turning point was this recognition in Paris. She returned to Algeria, married the musician El Hadj Mahfoud Mahieddine in 1953, and for a decade largely withdrew from artistic production; a period aligned with the turbulence of the Algerian War of Independence.

In 1963, she resumed painting. The National Museum of Algiers acquired some of her early works, sparking renewed public interest.

Key Work: Femmes Attablées (1947)

In Femmes Attablées, a gouache on paper, Baya presents a gathering of women seated around a table. The work dances between the world of folklore and the surreal. The figures are flat, stylized, surrounded by plants, vessels, and fluid forms.

Her palette is vivid: turquoise, pinks, greens. The women are faceless, emblematic rather than individualized. The scene is dreamlike.

The genius lies in balance: she fills space without clutter, allows shapes to breathe, and makes the ordinary fantastic.

Baya’s style resists classification. Critics have described her as both surrealist and modern, primitive and naïve! All attempting to capture what she could not name.

Yet she was not a follower of movements. Her source was Kabyle folklore, nature, domestic life, and her own imagination. She incorporated motifs of birds, flowers, vases, and women in robes.

Institutions now see her as a linchpin of Algerian modernism who paved the way for women artists in North Africa.