Paula Rego

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