Baya was born Fatma Haddad-Maheiddine in 1931 in Bordj – El – Kiffan, nearby Algiers. The premature death of her parents when she was only 5 years old robbed her of her youth. She was raised by her grandmother who worked at the house of French settlers. She didn’t go to school and ended up working – being exploited – as a servant, before Marguerite Camina, a French resident of Algiers, noticed and then adopted her, providing her once again with a peaceful, affectionate environment to grow up in. Her adoptive mother notice of the young girl`s artistic talent for modelling fantastical characters and animals in clay, encouraging her to try her hand at gouache painting. In 1943, the painter Jean Peyrissac ( 1895 – 1974 ), who lived in Algiers from 1920, showed Bay`s efforts to the vacationing Parisen gallerist Aimé Maeght, eliciting his interest: Maeght excitedly offered Baya to exhibit twelve or so of her painting in his metropolitan gallery.
When shown in Paris, Baya`s gouaches caught the eye of Andre Breton who expressed his delight in admiring review published in the journal “ Behind the Mirror ” – she was only sixteen years old at the time. It was no wonder that the father of surrealism and detractor of rationalistic pretensions would take interest in her work, recognising it as expressing the “ inner voice ” that he so valued. Indeed, the young autodidact combined expressions of her feelings, imagination and intuition in her art. Her exuberant forms and colours invited onlookers to journey to a self-contained and peaceful universe reminiscent of fairytales and heaven, where almond-eyed women in majestic dresses were flanked by mythical birds, luxurious flora, and springs as clear skies. From time to time of her first gouaches, Baya created a sort of collection of animal and vegetal motifs born from her imagination, arranging them differently in each piece to generate truly varied compositions in which women`s figures always hold a pivotal place. Following her inaugural exhibition, Baya lived in the south of France for a few years meeting Georges Braque and Picasso – the latter at Madoura pottery studio in Vallauris, where she produced ceramic sculptures. Returning to Algiers in 1953, one year before the start of the Algerian war, Baya married the music master Hadj El Mahfoud, an expert in traditional Arab – Andalucian music. She retreated to the confined space of her home and led fecund family-life that temporarily pushed her painting aside. Some critics interpreted this hiatus as a “ constrained step backward into a traditional role ” ; others came to her defence, such as the writer Assia Djebar, who socialised with Baya “ You are now protected, surrounded , back to an ancestral role, but your head has remained full of child-magician dreams, while your hands change babies for the time being ”.In 1963 Baya, enthusiastically returned to painting as Algeria celebrated its newly established independence from France. Working on a large paper sheets, she produced brighter, lighter gouaches, expanding her repertoire of motifs toward a certain musicality with inclusion of her husband countless instruments ( Violins, zithers, harps, lute, etc.). She also depicted opulent flora and fauna, offering endless variations on fruit and fish, birds and objects; she used restrained, simple means of representation, but which are highly evocative of deeper sources, myths and the imaginary universes of the Maghreb.