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. On a flower farm on the outskirts of Algiers where she worked as a day laborer, Baya met the Frenchwomen Marguerite Caminat, who took her in as a housekeeper and soon became her guardian and artistic mentor. Marguerite showed Baya’s paintings to a Parisian gallery owner, Aimé Maeght, who organized her first solo show in Paris a few months before her 16th birthday. The impact of Baya on modern art is only now being recognized in Algeria and in France.
