--- title: "Baya: women, birds and instruments in her paintings" description: "A dress houses birds; musical instruments grow like living beings. Three gouaches trace changes in Baya's painting from around 1947 to 1976." canonical: https://chicodasilva.org/en/articles/baya-paintings/ lang: en license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ translations: en: https://chicodasilva.org/en/articles/baya-paintings/ fr: https://chicodasilva.org/fr/articles/baya-peintures/ pt: https://chicodasilva.org/pt/artigos/baya-pinturas/ --- Art and artists # Baya: women, birds and instruments in her paintings A dress houses birds; musical instruments grow like living beings. Three gouaches trace changes in Baya's painting from around 1947 to 1976. The embrace occupies the centre of *Femme en robe orange et cheval bleu*. An orange sleeve loops behind the animal’s neck; below, the blue curve of its head follows the curve of the arm. Woman and horse are linked by this fit, while tiny birds wander across the dress. The painting’s subject is already present in that gesture of closeness, before we try to name every creature. Baya, the name chosen by Algerian artist Fatma Haddad (1931–1998), painted the work around 1947.[^lam] Its title identifies a horse, but the long-eared head follows no precise zoological model. The little birds also have recombined parts. The painting keeps its animals recognisable while giving them dimensions and anatomies of their own. ![A woman with blue hair and an orange dress covered with small birds embraces a blue horse's neck; green leaves surround the figures on light paper.](https://chicodasilva.org/editorial/baya/femme-cheval-640.jpg) *Femme en robe orange et cheval bleu, around 1947. Gouache, graphite and ink on paper laid on board, 74.7 × 91.6 cm. Baya. LaM collection, 999.68.1, gift of L'Aracine in 1999. Photograph: Alain Lauras. Credit given by the source: © Othmane Mahieddine. [LaM catalogue entry and reproduction](https://www.musee-lam.fr/fr/femme-en-robe-orange-et-cheval-bleu).* The woman has slanting eyes, a red mouth and a great mass of blue hair. Pale dots and curves ornament the hair, echoing the colours of the creatures scattered across her clothing. Blue passes from one figure to another: it is the horse’s skin, reappears in the birds and darkens around the woman’s face. Repeating the colour creates kinships between things of very different sizes. Every bird on the dress still has room to be seen whole. Some are low and compact; others raise their necks or trail long tails. There are two-headed animals, small groups and a blue creature with a tall crest. The fabric gathers a bestiary within one figure without turning the birds into a regular repeat pattern. Orange intervals remain unequal, and no creature seems an exact copy of its neighbour. Along the left and the top, green branches make a discontinuous border. Washes reveal changes of intensity within leaves and the blue body. This handling lends lightness to the space around the woman, even when horse and dress occupy almost the entire sheet. Pale paper remains visible between branches and around the face, whose expression depends on just a few marks. ## Paris, 1947, and the life that followed Baya’s first solo exhibition took place at Galerie Maeght in Paris in the autumn of 1947. Still a teenager, she travelled with Marguerite Caminat, who had taken her into her home in Algeria and encouraged her work. André Breton wrote the introduction to the show.[^biennale] Her debut brought her into contact with the Parisian avant-garde at a very early age. The attention received then can make her history seem much shorter than it was. Anissa Bouayed, historian of the Institut du monde arabe’s 2022–2023 retrospective, questions the limitations of a story about miraculously appearing talent and an automatic classification as naïve art.[^ima] Between the gouache of around 1947 and the paintings of later decades lies a working life, interrupted and resumed. After marrying in 1953, Baya stopped making art. She returned to painting in the early 1960s, supported by Jean de Maisonseul, director of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Algiers.[^dossier] Familiar motifs reappear in compositions giving them other functions. Musical instruments, in particular, take on a greater presence.[^ima] ## A woman the size of the room ![A woman in profile, with black hair and a pink dress patterned with dark leaves, appears between a stringed instrument and vases of large flowers.](https://chicodasilva.org/editorial/baya/dame-roses-640.jpg) *La Dame aux roses, 1967. Gouache on paper, 101 × 152 cm. Baya. Museum of the Institut du monde arabe. Photograph: Philippe Maillard. Credit given by the source: © Musée de l'IMA / Philippe Maillard. [Reproduction in the Institut du monde arabe press dossier](https://www.imarabe.org/sites/default/files/import_imarabe/files/documents/DOSSIER%20DE%20PRESSE%20-%20BAYA,%20ICONE%20DE%20LA%20PEINTURE%20ALGERIENNE.%20FEMMES%20EN%20LEUR%20JARDIN.pdf).* In *La Dame aux roses*, painted in 1967, almost no free space remains between the dress and the objects surrounding the woman. The large pink area advances from the right towards the lower left. Within it, dark shapes edged in green contain smaller patches, also pink. A leaf motif can thus contain the colour of the fabric on which it was painted. The face in profile and the black hair give direction to this arrangement. The woman turns left, towards a stringed instrument almost as tall as her head and visible torso. Small circles follow the rounded body; two elongated forms, resembling birds’ heads, rise at the top. The instrument acquires a stance of its own, upright beside the figure. The scale of the vases is also unstable. Some fit into the lower left corner, while flowers on either side grow high enough to touch the upper edge. There is no room drawn with floor, walls and vanishing point. We have objects that might inhabit a room, drawn together and enlarged until they fill the sheet. The woman organises this interior through the size of her dress and the direction of her face. Her dark neck makes an extended curve interrupted by a pale band. It brings the head into relation with long stems and the instrument’s curves. Shapes connect the figures, beyond simply occupying the same place. In the work of around 1947, an embrace joined woman and animal; here, curves extend that closeness to objects. ## What a background does to a bird Chico da Silva’s *Peacock*, painted in 1970, offers a way to gauge a difference in the use of colour. A black ground isolates the blue neck and red legs, while the tail rises in long feathers full of eyespots. [![A tall peacock with a fanned tail of colourful eye-spots on a black ground. Peacock, Chico da Silva, 1970, gouache on canvas.](https://img.chicodasilva.org/jcc-014/chico-da-silva-peacock-1970-gouache-on-canvas-hardboard-64x44cm-joao-cunha-collection-jcc-014-chicodasilva.org-1280.jpg)](https://chicodasilva.org/en/paintings/peacock-1970-014/) *[Peacock (1970)](https://chicodasilva.org/en/paintings/peacock-1970-014/), Chico da Silva João Cunha Collection.* The tail’s circles repeat eyes in yellow, green, blue and white. Black remains visible between feathers, separating the branches of this fan. In Baya’s paintings, colour passes more readily from one kind of thing to another: dress and bird may share the same pink; leaf and instrument may receive the same thick outline. Almost the whole environment participates in the figure. This difference becomes especially clear when the woman leaves the centre and instruments take her place. ## Instruments come forward ![Pink birds with curved tails surround three stringed instruments with yellow bodies, among green leaves and small gaps of pale paper.](https://chicodasilva.org/editorial/baya/oiseaux-musiciens-640.jpg) *Les Oiseaux musiciens, 1976. Gouache on paper, 100 × 150 cm. Baya. Private collection. Photograph: Alberto Ricci. Credit given by the source: © Photo Alberto Ricci. [Reproduction in the Institut du monde arabe press dossier](https://www.imarabe.org/sites/default/files/import_imarabe/files/documents/DOSSIER%20DE%20PRESSE%20-%20BAYA,%20ICONE%20DE%20LA%20PEINTURE%20ALGERIENNE.%20FEMMES%20EN%20LEUR%20JARDIN.pdf).* In *Les Oiseaux musiciens*, from 1976, two large yellow instrument bodies tilt in opposite directions. One has its neck pointing downwards, the other extends upwards; a smaller instrument crosses the lower area. Their strings are thin lines enclosed by thick borders, where circles and patches make the wood as heavily patterned as the plumage. The pink birds at the edges seem to make room for the instruments. One tail rises, bends at the top and folds back on itself; the other spreads beside the lower left edge. Narrow intervals of pale paper remain between these volumes. The composition gives birds and objects a comparable weight without giving them exactly the same contours. The absence of a woman makes these relationships stranger. No hands play the strings, yet the instruments’ necks cross the sheet like limbs, and their bodies rise among those of birds. In the IMA dossier, Claude Lemand calls such compositions “living still lifes” and recalls that Baya’s husband was a musician in the Arab-Andalusian tradition.[^dossier] The painting brings music into a space where instruments already seem to have company and movement of their own. With each passage, a small detail can change function: a circle is an eye in a pink head and an ornament on an instrument’s edge; a series of curves follows a tail and reappears in leaves. Baya gives her creatures neighbours with whom they share colours and patterns. A garden can fit inside clothing or occupy an entire sheet. Suheyla Takesh records that the artist humorously referred to her practice as “Baya-ism”.[^2024] The name suits a painting whose repertoire remains recognisable while the arrangement of its characters changes. Between the 1947 embrace and the 1976 instruments, these relationships alter: who occupies most space, who leans towards whom, how much pale paper remains between two bodies. For readers looking for Baya in France, the LaM includes her in *Singulières : artistes, autodidactes, affranchies*, October 3, 2026–February 14, 2027, and reproduces the woman in the orange dress on the exhibition page.[^singulieres] *La Dame aux roses* belongs to the Museum of the Institut du monde arabe; the dossier identifies *Les Oiseaux musiciens* as privately owned.[^dossier] [^lam]: LaM. [*Femme en robe orange et cheval bleu*](https://www.musee-lam.fr/fr/femme-en-robe-orange-et-cheval-bleu), around 1947, inventory 999.68.1. Technical record, acquisition and photograph by Alain Lauras. In French. [^biennale]: Stefano Mudu. [*Baya Mahieddine*](https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2022/witchs-cradle/baya-mahieddine). La Biennale di Venezia, 2022: the 1947 exhibition, Marguerite Caminat and André Breton’s introduction. [^ima]: Institut du monde arabe. [*Baya, icône de la peinture algérienne. Femmes en leur Jardin*](https://www.imarabe.org/fr/agenda/expositions-musee/baya-icone-peinture-algerienne), 2022–2023. Anissa Bouayed on reading the artist historically and the introduction of music into her painting. In French. [^dossier]: Institut du monde arabe. [*Baya. Femmes en leur Jardin*, press dossier](https://www.imarabe.org/sites/default/files/import_imarabe/files/documents/DOSSIER%20DE%20PRESSE%20-%20BAYA,%20ICONE%20DE%20LA%20PEINTURE%20ALGERIENNE.%20FEMMES%20EN%20LEUR%20JARDIN.pdf), 2022. Cover: *La Dame aux roses*; pp. 4–7: marriage, interruption and return to painting; Claude Lemand interview, p. 15: music and still lifes; p. 17: reproduction and details of *Les Oiseaux musiciens*. Printed pagination. In French. [^2024]: Suheyla Takesh. [*Baya*](https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2024/portraits/baya). La Biennale di Venezia, 2024: the expression “Baya-ism” and the female figures. [^singulieres]: LaM. [*Singulières : artistes, autodidactes, affranchies*](https://www.musee-lam.fr/fr/singulieres-artistes-autodidactes-affranchies). Dates, artists and reproduction of the gouache from around 1947. Accessed 23 October 2026. In French. ## Related reading - [Séraphine Louis: flowers and trees in an imagined world](https://chicodasilva.org/en/articles/seraphine-louis-paintings/) - [Henri Rousseau: jungles imagined in Paris](https://chicodasilva.org/en/articles/henri-rousseau-paintings/) - [Fantastic bestiary: how painting invents an animal](https://chicodasilva.org/en/articles/fantastic-bestiary-painting/)