Paula Rego
"I get inspiration from things that have nothing to do with painting: caricature, items from newspapers, sights in the street, proverbs, nursery rhymes, children's games and songs, nightmares, desires, terrors.... That question [why do you paint?] has been put to me before and my answer was, 'To give terror a face.' But it's more than that. I paint because I can't help it."
Rego's work challenged gender stereotypes and the abuse of power. Her images gave the central role to women, generally portrayed as robust and confident while her men are weak, child-like and easily thwarted. "I paint the women I know" Rego said in 2021. "I paint what I see. I make women the protagonists because I am one."
Drawing upon traditional folk tales and children's stories, her female protagonists are often depicted at the centre of complex and enigmatic narratives.
Born into a liberal family in Lisbon in 1935, her formative years were spent in the oppressive atmosphere of Salazar's Portuguese dictorship. Determined that his daughter should escape this restrictive environment, Rego's father sent her to London in the 1950s to study. From 1952 - 56 she attended the Slade School of Fine Art.
Rego began exhibiting with the London Group in 1962, and three years later was selected to take part in a group show - Six Artists - at the Institude of Contemporary Arts. She served as the Portuguese representative at the 1969 São Paulo Art Biennial. During the next two decades she exhibited regularly in Britain and Portugal. In 1988 Rego was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon and the Serpentine Gallery in London. This led to her being invited to become the first artist in residence at the National Gallery in 1990.
Other exhibitions included a retrospective at Tate Liverpool in 1997, Dulwich Picture Gallery in 1998, Tate Britain in 2005, and Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 2007.
