Le Voyage, 1962
Rachel Baes (1912-1983)
Le Voyage (1962) by Rachel Baes is a characteristic late-surrealist work from the period just after she withdrew from public artistic life and settled in Bruges. Le Voyage comes at a pivotal moment in Baes's life, as around 1961–62 she largely retreated from the art world and lived in increasing solitude. By then, her surrealism had become highly personal, and less concerned with the collective theories of the surrealist movement and more with memory, loss, dreams, and inner psychological landscapes.
Baes occupied an unusual position among Belgian surrealists. Although she moved in circles that included René Magritte, André Breton, Paul Éluard, and Jean Cocteau, she resisted being defined by any artistic group. She famously wrote: "I am not a surrealist painter, I am a surrealist who paints." Her work is often populated by solitary female figures, dreamlike settings, and an atmosphere of melancholy introspection.
In Baes's work, journeys are often psychological rather than physical. Following the traumatic death of her lover, the politician Joris Van Severen, in 1940, her paintings became increasingly concerned with memory, absence, longing, and dream states. Critics have described her art as a realm inhabited by isolated women and girls suspended between reality and imagination. For Baes, who repeatedly returned to themes of solitude and remembrance, Le Voyage may be understood as an inner voyage rather than a literal one. Unlike the explosive visual inventions of artists such as Max Ernst, Baes tended toward quiet psychological drama - her surrealism is intimate and poetic rather than shocking.
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.
