Baya Mahieddine

Algeria, b.1931-1998

A self-taught artist, Baya began painting and working with clay in 1943. Baya’s style was based on infantile dreams and imagination expressed in naïve- surrealistic forms. Although she constantly used the same figures, she was unable to explain her works rationally. Orphaned at the age of five and from a poor family, she was adopted by a French couple living in Algeria. Yet she never learnt to read and write.