Fatma MAHIEDDINE dite BAYA, (1931-1998) - Lot 44

Fatma MAHIEDDINE dite BAYA, (1931-1998) Painted terracotta jug with flowers and birds on a white background. Unsigned. Height Approx. 32 cm (restoration, small chip and small paint chips) Provenance : Gift from the artist to the current owner Baya is the painter and sculptor name of Fatma Haddad. She was born in 1931 into a poor family near Bordj El Kiffan and died in 1998 in Blida. This young girl, who never attended school, experienced suffering and violence. At the end of the colonial period, she was propelled to the pinnacle of notoriety. Baya was 16 when the Aimé Maeght gallery in Paris held its first major exhibition of her work in 1947. André Breton, who prefaced the catalog, dubbed her "the Queen of a New World". Baya dazzled Parisian art lovers, and Christian Dior bought 10 of her works. She was the subject of a double-page spread (written by Edmonde Charles-Roux) in Vogue magazine in 1948. She stopped all artistic work in 1953, the year of her marriage to the Arab-Andalusian musician El Hadj Mahfoud Mahieddine (1903-1979). She returned to Algeria in 1962, where her work was widely exhibited in Algeria and France until her final years. The artist mastered a highly personal language of shapes and colors, often wrongly described as "naïve art" or "art brut". Baya's watercolors have a unique musicality, based on whimsical arabesques and a profuse outpouring of pure color. Her inner world, a reflection of her childhood emotions, is captivating in its poetic power. Because of his singularity, his work was to have a major influence in Algeria, particularly on the generation of young painters formed after independence. After independence, his works were included in the Musées National des Beaux-Arts d'Alger. The Institut du Monde Arabe and the Centre de la Vieille Charité in Marseille have recently paid tribute to the work and life of this artist with the exhibition "Baya, Icône de la Peinture Algérienne, Femmes en leur Jardin", November 8, 2022 to March 26, 2023. Baya's ceramics Baya's attraction to sculpture and pottery was nurtured by childhood visits to Kabylia, her mother's homeland. Here, women have been making handmade ceramics in unusual shapes since ancient times. Baya began working with ceramics at the invitation of Adrien Maeght at the Madoura workshops in Vallauris. At the time, she was Picasso's studio neighbor. Her first round-bosses were monochrome, then her ceramics were adorned with polychrome motifs from her favorite watercolors: women with wavy hairstyles, flowers, birds and fish. In the present collection, Baya's designs are based on everyday objects purchased at the market. Thanks to the magic of her polychromy, Baya transforms a banal object into an eminently poetic artifact.