What became of young Baya?
by Ariella Budick
Financial Times, January 24, 2018
“In 1947, a 16-year-old Algerian orphan named Baya suddenly became a Parisian art star. The dealer Aimé Maeght “discovered” her in Algiers and feted her with a possibly unprecedented one-young-woman show. He was not alone in his devotions. The surrealist guru André Breton, who helped organise the exhibition, saw in her dazzling gouaches the very future of painting. French Vogue published a full-page portrait of the teenager, accompanied by wonderstruck prose; Picasso, Braque, Camus, Matisse and Dubuffet all patted her on the head. The Grey Art Gallery has assembled 20 of the pieces from the Galerie Maeght show, a recreation that is at once exhilarating and sad.”