Rachel Baes (1912 -1983)
Rachel Baes (1912-1983) was a Belgian surrealist painter who was the daughter of the artist Émile Baes. She received no formal artistic training but began her career in 1929 when she exhibited works at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris to critical acclaim. Creating dreamlike worlds that evoked surrealism, often depicting lone women in interiors, she quickly became known for her distinctive surrealist style.
Baes was of solitary nature. Although her work forms part of the surrealist domain, she refused to commit to the movement: "I am not a surrealist painter, I am a surrealist who paints” she wrote in her diary. A further statement testifies to her freedom- loving disposition: “My art of painting: poetry, rebellion, solitude”. This did not, however, prevent her from frequenting both the surrealist Circle in Brussels, and members of the French group. In the 1930s, she became a member of the surrealist group around René Magritte and counted among her friends André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Paul Éluard but also Max Ernst, Georges Bataille and Irène Hamoir. Between 1936 and 1940, Baes was in a relationship with Joris Van Severen, the leader of the extreme rightist Verdinaso party in Belgium. Van Severen was shot erroneously by French troops in 1940. In 1945, she met Paul Éluard and his wife Nusch, whose portrait she painted. The following year, Éluard published a poem in which he described Baes “As a lonely woman, who draws instead of talking”. She first encountered E.L.T Mesens and René Magritte through the poet, and art dealer Herman Toussaint in 1947. That same year, Magritte painted her portrait as Shéhérazade. An extravagant personality, Baes was also to act as his muse for some amateur films. Baes published a biography - Joris Van Severen, une âme - in 1965. From 1961 she retired from public life and lived alone in Bruges. She was buried at Abbeville, alongside Van Severen.
In 2002, the Koninklijk Museum in Antwerp featured Baes alongside Jane Graverol in an exhibition: Voor Schone Kunsten.
