December 23, 2022 - April 30, 2023
Paula Rego is a Portuguese/British artist who revolutionised the ways women are represented and is not one to compromise her truths. The Story of Stories shows how Rego authentically confronts oppression, authority, and institutional violence while not being afraid to reveal her own personal nature and socio-political context.
The exhibition, curated by Alistair Hicks, re-affirms the importance of her work in Portugal in the 1960s and focuses on her emergence as an important artist on the London scene in the 1980s and 1990s. The Story of Stories focuses on Paula Rego and her work in different disciplines. Through her works beginning from the 1960s, the exhibition aims to demonstrate how she has fought against depression, fascism, colonialism, and the anti-abortion movement while also unleashing her stories from the male linear leash.
Rego has rescued the stories and put them back into the main stream of art. When she started her career at The Slade School of Fine Arts, she was dismissed for painting visual gossip. The ban against the story was just one of many ways men tried to stop women from competing as artists on an equal basis. Each story that is told and retold helps show how rich the world is if we veer off the prescribed path.
The Story of Stories invites viewers to enter the magical environment in Paula Rego’s paintings where innocence and experience coexist and where she dissembles deep meaning and narrative.
Image Credits
Salazar Vomiting the Homeland, 1960
Oil on canvas
94 x 120 cm
Courtesy of CAM-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian Collection, Lisbon
Carmen Miranda, 1985
Acrylic on paper mounted on canvas
121 x 151 cm
Private Collection
Red Monkey Beats His Wife, 1981
Acrylic on paper
65 x 105 cm
Courtesy of Ostrich Arts Ltd. & Victoria Miro Collection
Untitled No. 4, 1998
Pastel on paper mounted on aluminum
110 x 100 cm
Private Collection
3D Virtual Tour
Exhibition Catalogue
Curated by Alistair Hicks, The Story of Stories focuses on Paula Rego’s work in different disciplines, re-affirms the importance of her work in Portugal in the 1960s and focuses on her emergence as an important artist on the London scene in the 1980s and 1990s. Through her works beginning from the 1960s, the exhibition aims to demonstrate how she has fought against depression, fascism, colonialism, and the anti-abortion movement while also unleashing her stories from the male linear leash.
As part of the Paula Rego: The Story of Stories exhibition, Pera Museum presents a story narration, “The Tale of Tales: A Journey into Words and Music”, by fairy tale narrator and art therapist Judith Liberman.
On the occasion of Paula Rego’s first solo exhibition in Istanbul, Pera Museum in collaboration with the British Council is hosting Elena Crippa, the Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary British Art at Tate Britain, and Paula Rego: The Story of Stories’ curator Alistair Hicks for a talk.
The Story of Stories shows how Paula Rego, a Portuguese/British artist who revolutionised the ways women are represented and is not one to compromise her truths, authentically confronts oppression, authority, and institutional violence while not being afraid to reveal her own personal nature and socio-political context.
Video
Pera Learning
Pera Learning is organizing various online and face-to-face workshops for children between the ages of 4 to 17 as part of its Carnival of Dreams Program.
Pera Learning organizes online and face-to-face workshops for participants between the ages of 4-17 as part of the Dance with Colors program.
Pera Museum Learning Programs organizes interdisciplinary workshops for adults within the scope of Istanbuls Today and Paula Rego: The Story of Stories.
We, by which I mean some of my classmates and I, knew about Paula Rego. I’ll have to admit, I didn’t know where Rego was from or even where in Europe Portugal was. I thought she was English. Let me tell you how I first heard the very un-English sounding name “Paula Rego”
While Paula Rego belatedly was recognised as one of the leading feminist pioneers of her age, little has been written about her exploration of fluid sexuality. Indeed the current of sado-masochism in her drawings and paintings, has tended to encourage an understanding as a classic clash between the patriarchy and exploited women.
Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, Pera Museum invites artist Benoît Hamet to reinterpret key pieces from its collections, casting a humourous eye over ‘historical’ events, both imagined and factual.
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The museum is closed on Mondays.
On Wednesdays, the students can
visit the museum free of admission.
Full ticket: 80 TL
Discounted: 40 TL
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