MAHIEDDINE BAYA (1931-1998) Lot n° 70

Danse des foulards, 1975 Gouache ans watercolor on paper, signed and dated en bas, contresignée on reverse 100 x 140 cm 39 3/8 x 55 1/8 in. Born near Algiers, Baya (1931-1998) was orphaned at the age of five and soon lived with Marguerite Caminat, a French painter living in Algeria. She then painted fantastic characters and animals in clay that were shown to Aimé Maeght who was visiting Algiers in 1943. At the age of sixteen, she had her first solo exhibition at the Maeght Gallery in Paris in 1947, whose catalog was prefaced by André Breton. It was an immediate success and she met Braque, Picasso and the artistic society of Paris. In 1948, while making pottery and ceramics at the Madoura studio in Vallauris, she met Picasso. It was at this time that she switched to watercolor painting on paper. Women, flowers and birds inhabit her works and impregnate her work with a wonderful and paradisiacal dimension. Baya will then be associated in Art History with naïve painters, primitivism and art brut. She exhibited regularly in Algiers and Paris (Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Alger in 1963, Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1964).