Alice 1917

Alice Bailly  "Self-Portrait 1917"  National Museum of Women in the Arts

Alice Bailly (1872-1938) was a Swiss artist who began her career as one of the few female fauves (wild beasts) an art movement spearheaded by Henri Matisse and André Derain. Bailly became interested in Fauvism while she was spending some years studying art in Paris. She even exhibited in their final group exhibition of 1908. At the beginning of World War I however, Bailly returned to Switzerland, and embarked on a long series of "wool paintings"in which she used strands of colored wool glued down on a support to create a picture. Between 1913 and 1922 she made at least fifty such pieces. She also experimented with the Dada movement during this time.  In 1936 she was commissioned to create eight large murals for the foyer of the Théâtre Municipal in Lausanne. She died in 1938 from complications of Tuberculosis, leaving in her will provision for a trust fund to help young Swiss artists.

How to pronounce her name:  

AL-ees  (b-eye)-YEE