Alice Bailly

Alice Bailly (February 25, 1872 – January 1, 1938) was a radical Swiss painter, known for her interpretation of cubism and her multimedia wool paintings. Bailly was born in Geneva, Switzerland, where she attended separate classes for women at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, studying under Hugues Bovy and Denise Sarkiss. She also went on to study in Munich, Germany. By 1906 she had moved to Paris, where she befriended a number of notable modernist paint... more

Alice Bailly (February 25, 1872 – January 1, 1938) was a radical Swiss painter, known for her interpretation of cubism and her multimedia wool paintings. Bailly was born in Geneva, Switzerland, where she attended separate classes for women at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, studying under Hugues Bovy and Denise Sarkiss. She also went on to study in Munich, Germany. By 1906 she had moved to Paris, where she befriended a number of notable modernist painters such as Juan Gris, Francis Picabia, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Fernand Léger, Sonia Lewitska and Marie Laurencin. While in Paris she became interested in Fauvism, and showed some paintings in the style at the Salon d'Automne alongside principal painters of the movement. At the beginning of World War I, Bailly returned to Switzerland and invented her signature tableaux-laine or "wool paintings" in which short strands of colored yarn acted as brush strokes. Between 1913 and 1922 she made approximately fifty paintings in this style. She... less