L’ocell canta, Baya pinta. Fatma Haddad (Baya). Bordj-el-Kifan, 1931 - Blida, 1998. Algèria. Col·lecció Salim Becha

29/02/2024 – 29/06/2024

By Pilar Bonet

Baya paints with a brush, in gouache and on paper. Hours and hours, drawing a graphic scripture of undulating lines and botanical forms in which she reveals precious secret gardens. The protagonists of here painted paradise are always women, figures with long hair and cosmic eyes that co-exist in harmony among animals and vegetation, surrounded by ceramics, musical instruments or fabrics. The birds skirt around the women with their song and colours, while Baya fuses them in a magical ritual of transformation: the fishes fly, the birds walk, the horses listen and the mandolins levitate. It is a joyous world.

The artist has a predilection for magical scenes and arcane symbolism that persists today in the crafts of North Africa.  She paints joyous and exquisite scenes, inspired by Arabic poetry and the roots of ancient Mediterranean culture. A spirit she has inside her and maintains throughout her life, in the same way she devotedly preserves her dress sense and her religious practice. Her paintings have black outlines and seem like dynamic scriptures that resonate aloud, like the Berber agraffe tradition. The paintings and ceramics germinate among perfumes of the legendary Orient.

Baya’s European travels do not determine her work and she remains loyal to the world and culture of ancestors. She does not adopt the language of the famous artists she meets in France either. Baya has no need to learn from Picasso, whom she meets in Vallauris in 1948, nor from the European avant-garde, despite participating at the Exposition internationale du Surréalisme with three small sculptures. Her first individual exhibition is at Galerie Maeght of Paris in 1947, although she preferrs to enjoy the official opening telling stories to one of the gallery owner's children.

She is an old-school artist, a visionary of time immemorial that establishes itself in the traditions and culture of women, the culture of love and a respect for life. Her creativity springs from the memories of the mother she lost when she was little and the North African tradition of spoken stories which she narrates or illustrates to her six children and to the whole world.

The internal visions of the artist take their light from natural materials and the vibration of the energy of the cosmos. Her creation is a quest for prenatal harmony, the origins of a pleasing world where everything is free, eternal and universal. Baya is the visionary who expresses the spirit of the explosive colours in the fabrics of the women of her Kabila culture in northern Algeria.

Baya delves into the invisible and transforms our Western perception of art. She is the Magicienne [Magician], the Visionnaire [Visionary], the Enchanteresse [Enchantresse], the Fleur [Flower]. In the words of Albert Camus, C’est la princeses au milieu des barbares [she is the princess among the barbarians], with reference to the art world. And in this intimate declaration she confides in us the most wonderful secret: Je ne sais pas, je sens… [I don’t know, I feel…][1]

Pilar Bonet Julve

[Visionary Women Art – Research Group]