Talk and Book Signing : 'Seeing Baya' by Alice Kaplan

Join us for a talk with historian Alice Kaplan, author of Seeing Baya: Portrait of an Algerian Artist in Paris (University of Chicago Press; 2024), the first biography of the Algerian artist, celebrated in mid-twentieth-century Paris, her life shrouded in myth.

Signed copies of the publication will be available for purchase.

BAYA (1931 - 1998) the Algerian artist, was born Fatima Haddad. Having lost both parents at the age of five, she was raised by her grandmother until the age of eleven. Unable to keep up with costs, shebegan working as a live-in servant for Marguerite Caminat, a Frenchwoman whose personal art collection included works by such notable modernists as Braque and Matisse. Caminat saw the artistic potential in her and encouraged her to develop her skills, remarking on the enthusiasm with which she modeled figures out of clay.