Rachel Baes

The growth of the women's movement in the late 20th century led to renewed interest in female artists and brought greater appreciation of their work.

[1] In 2002 the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp dedicated an exhibition to Baes and the female French-Belgian surrealist painter Jane Graverol.

She came to know André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Max Ernst, Georges Bataille, Irène Hamoir, and Paul Éluard.

On 20 May 1940, when the advancing German Army cut off the area, a group of French soldiers killed a number of the Belgian prisoners under their care including Van Severen, an event remembered as the Abbeville massacre.

From 1962, Baes retired from public life and lived alone in Huize 't Haentje, now known as Hotel Malleberg, in Bruges where she painted local subjects.