Born in Kabylie in 1931, Baya moved to Algiers in 1943, under the protection of the intellectual Marguerite Caminat Benhoura. This gives him access to education, to plastic equipment, as well as to his collection of works of modern art, including Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Miro. His precocious talent impressed André Breton, who saw in his paintings an imaginary world akin to surrealism. Baya thus appeared at the International Exhibition of Surrealism at the Galerie Maeght in Paris in July 1947, and followed with a personal exhibition in November. She then moved to Vallauris to work on modeling and sculpture, notably with Picasso. In 1953, she moved to Algeria, where she continued to paint until her death in 1998.
Self-taught, his gouaches meet no other standard except his phantasmagorical conception of the world. It is distinguished by a style that belongs to it and that does not fit into any contemporary movement. His women, fantastic animals and his landscapes are composed in large areas of color, sometimes surrounded by a thick black line. The two-dimensional compositions lead Baya to represent his characters often in profile, and rarely from the front. Today, his work is presented in private collections around the world, in France, in Japan, at the Musée d'Art Brut in Lausanne, and most recently in Sharjah. It appears in the Dictionary of Surrealism, although it cannot be linked to any tendency.