1 - Fatma Haddad Mahieddine, known as BAYA (1931–1998)

Fatma Haddad Mahieddine, known as BAYA (1931–1998) Woman in a garden, zither, oud and birds. Gouache and pencil on paper, signed and dated 1981 in the bottom right-hand corner, countersigned on the reverse. Height: 49 – Width: 50 cm (worm-eaten edges and pinholes). Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by Marieme Helie Lucas, a sociologist and feminist activist from Algiers. Given to her son. Originally from Kabylie, Fatma Haddad was orphaned at the age of nine. From a very young age, she found solace in drawing, which she would do right on the floor. In the 1940s in Algiers, a French painter, Marguerite Caminat, took the young girl under her wing and encouraged her to develop her creativity. Baya – who chose her own artist’s name – crossed paths with Aimé Maeght whilst he was travelling in Algiers. Fascinated by her work, he organised her first exhibition in Paris in 1947; she was just sixteen at the time. André Breton praised her, saying: ‘Baya is a queen of emancipation and harmony.’ She thus became a pioneering figure in modern Algerian art. In 1953, she married the musician El Hadj Mahfoud Mahieddine, a grand master of Arab-Andalusian music. With him by her side, music became a major source of inspiration. Baya’s work, almost always on paper, very often centres on the themes of women and gardens. In this piece, dressed in a blue dress inspired by Kabyle taqendurts, the female figure appears majestic, sovereign and free in a reinvented, joyful and colourful world. One can also see in this woman an evocation of the mother she lost at such a young age. In this world where man is absent, the artist incorporates recurring artistic motifs into her work; the oud and the zither, which, amidst the birds and vegetation, stand out as characters in their own right. The sociologist Marieme Helie Lucas, a committed campaigner for women’s rights and secularism, has acquired this work, which echoes her struggles and reveals women as a poetic and cultural standard-bearer, a symbol of freedom and emancipation.