Alice Bailly

Alice Bailly (25 February 1872 – 1 January 1938) was a radical Swiss painter, known for her interpretations on cubism, fauvism, her wool paintings, and her participation in the Dada movement. In 1906, Bailly had settled in Paris where she befriended Juan Gris, Francis Picabia, and Marie Laurencin, avant-garde modernist painters who influenced her works and her later life.

Bailly was born in Geneva, Switzerland, where she attended the École des Beaux-Arts and took women's-only courses. During her time there she studied under Hugues Bovy and Denise Sarkiss. She later studied in Munich, Germany. By 1904 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 exhibiting her wood engravings, she became interested in Fauvism. What drew Bailly to fauvism was the "style's bold use of intense colors, dark outlines, and emphatically unrealistic anatomy and space." Her paintings in this style were eventually shown in the Salon d'Automne in 1908 along with many other distinguished Fauv painters.

In 1912, Bailly's work was chosen to represent Swiss artists in an exhibit that traveled through Russia, England, and Spain. After this, she became immersed immersed in Futuristic aesthetics and the avant-garde. At the start of World War I, Bailly returned to her native country of Switzerland and invented her signature "wool paintings," which were her own variations of Cubism. The style consisted of short strands of colored yarn that acted as brush strokes. She made about 50 of these wool paintings between 1913 and 1922.

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