Editor’s note: This story has been updated and edited for accuracy.
Born into poverty and orphaned at age five, the 20th-century Algerian painter Baya Mahieddine had an unlikely path to becoming an artist at all, much less an internationally recognised one. Yet by the time she was 16, she had earned enough acclaim to have her first solo exhibition.
Baya’s story is just one of many available in the Mathaf's Encyclopedia. Read about Dia al-Azzawi, considered one of the pioneers of modern Arab art, or delve into the biography of Lebanese artist Saloua Raouda Choucair, whose wide-ranging interests included quantum physics, molecular biology and optics.
