Lídia Baís (Campo Grande MS 1900 - Idem 1985)
Painter and draftswoman.
She began studying painting with Henrique Bernardelli in 1926. She spent the following year traveling in Europe, staying longest in Berlin and Paris, where she met Ismael Nery. Back in Brazil in 1928, she resumed her studies under Henrique Bernardelli. In 1950, she founded the Museu Baís in Campo Grande, which never opened to the public, and joined the Third Order of Saint Francis of Assisi, taking the name Sister Trindade. From then on, she devoted herself exclusively to religious and philosophical studies. Around 1960, under the pseudonym Maria Tereza Trindade, she published the book História de T. Lídia Baís [The Story of T. Lídia Baís].
Critiques
"Lídia Baís is a most interesting Brazilian and universal artist who intends to honor the city of São Paulo by holding an exhibition of paintings there. (...) You will see that much can be expected from her work. Disoriented at first, handed over to a few academic masters with no mastery at all, her talent struggled, until one day she broke free, and the result is, so far, some six excellent paintings that you will see. Others will come. The subjects she likes go beyond mere pictorial interest, some of them unheard of in a woman".
Murilo Mendes - 'Carta a Mário de Andrade' [Letter to Mário de Andrade], 1930
FIGUEIREDO, Aline. Artes Plásticas no Centro-Oeste. Aline Figueiredo. Cuiabá, UFMT, MACP, 1979. Bibliografia.
"Lídia Baís, (...), gave up painting altogether perhaps in the late 1940s. Her most fruitful period probably lies in the short span from 1926 to 1930 and includes strange compositions of mystical or supernatural character, portraits and self-portraits, allegories and interior or genre scenes, in which, using a rudimentary technique, she gives free rein to a naïve but unsettling surrealism".
José Roberto Teixeira Leite
LEITE, José Roberto Teixeira. Dicionário crítico da pintura no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Artlivre, 1988.
Solo Exhibitions
1929 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Solo, at Policlínica do Rio de Janeiro
Group Exhibitions
1950 - Campo Grande MS - Exhibition of the Grêmio de Amadores de Pintura de Campo Grande [Campo Grande Amateur Painters' Club]
Posthumous Exhibitions
1990 - Campo Grande MS - Lídia Baís, at Itaugaleria
Source: Itaú Cultural
