Paula Rego
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About
An artist of uncompromising vision and a peerless storyteller, Paula Rego (1935–2022) brought immense psychological insight and imaginative power to the genre of figurative art. Drawing upon details of her own extraordinary life, on politics and art history, on literature, folk legends, myths and fairytales, Rego’s work at its heart is an exploration of human relationships, her piercing eye trained on the established order and the codes, structures and dynamics of power that embolden or repress the characters she depicts. Often turning hierarchies on their heads, her tableaux, whether tender or tragic, consider the complexities of human experience and the experience of women in particular. She is especially celebrated for works that forcibly address aspects of female agency and resolve, suffering and survival, such as the Dog Women series, begun in 1994, the Abortion series, 1998–99, which is considered to have influenced Portugal’s successful second referendum on the legalisation of abortion in 2007, and the recent series Female Genital Mutilation, 2008–09.
Rego’s art transcends the art world. She is heralded as a feminist icon and is a household name. In her native Portugal the government commissioned the celebrated architect Eduardo Souto de Moura to design and build a museum dedicated exclusively to her work – Paula Rego’s House of Stories, situated in Cascais, which opened to the public in 2009. In the UK, where she attended the Slade School of Fine Art from 1952–56, her first major solo exhibition in London was held at AIR Gallery in 1981, followed in 1988 by an exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery. She was appointed the first National Gallery Associate Artist in 1989–90. She has been the subject of numerous books and TV programmes, including Paula Rego, Secrets & Stories, a BBC documentary directed by the artist’s son Nick Willing, which won the Royal Television Award for Best Arts Program in 2018, and The Southbank Show in 1992 and 2007. Her art continues to have an enduring influence upon younger generations, who are introduced to her work through the GCSE syllabus. In 2010 she was made a Dame of The British Empire by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
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Biography
Dame Paula Rego RA was born in 1935 in Lisbon, Portugal. She died in London on 8 June 2022.
The largest and most comprehensive retrospective of Rego's work to date was held at Tate Britain in 2021 (7 July–24 October 2021) and travelled to Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Netherlands (27 November 2021–20 March 2022), and Museo Picasso Málaga, Spain (26 April–21 August 2022). Works by the artist featured in the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani (2022).
Other current and recent major solo exhibitions include Paula Rego: The Personal and The Political, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany (2025); Paula Rego and Adriana Varejão: Between Your Teeth, Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, Portugal (2025); Paula Rego: Power Games, Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland (2025); Paula Rego: Manifesto, Casa das Histórias Paula Rego, Cascais, Portugal (2024); Paula Rego: Crivelli's Garden, The National Gallery, London, UK (2023); Paula Rego: The Story of Stories, Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey (2023 ); Paula Rego: Subversive Stories, featuring prints from across her career, at Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (2022); Paula Rego: Literary Inspirations at Petersfield Museum, Hampshire, UK (2022); Power Games, Museum De Reede, Antwerp, Belgium (2021), and Paula Rego: Obedience and Defiance, curated by Catherine Lampert, which travelled from MK Gallery, Milton Keynes to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh in 2019–20 and was on view at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin from September 2020–May 2021.
In 2020 Paula Rego - The Scream of Imagination | In Keys, organised by the Serralves Foundation, was on view at MACNA - Museu de Arte Contemporânea Nadir Afonso, Chaves, Portugal. Other recent solo exhibitions include Paula Rego: Visions of English Literature, Lakeside Arts, Nottingham, UK (2025); Giving Fear a Face, CEART: Centro de Arte Tomás y Valiente, Madrid, Spain (2019); The Cruel Stories of Paula Rego, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, France (2018-2019) and Folktales and Fairy Tales, Casa das Histórias Paula Rego, Cascais, Portugal (2018). Exhibitions of her work have been held previously at venues including: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Gas Natural Fenosa, La Coruña, Spain (2014); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Monterrey, Mexico; Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Brazil (2010-2011); École supérieure des beaux-arts, Nîmes, France (2008); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C., USA (2007-2008); Fundação das Descobertas, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Portugal (1997) Tate Liverpool, UK (1996-1997); AIR Gallery, London, UK (1981).Recent international group exhibitions include All Too Human: Bacon Freud and a Century of Painting, Tate Britain, London, UK (2018); travelled to Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary; Post-Pop, Outside the Commonplace, Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, Portugal (2018); Macau Biennial, Macau Museum of Art, Macau, China (2018); Bacon, Freud and the School of London, Museo Picasso, Malaga, Spain; travelled to ARoS, Aarhus, Denmark (2017-2018). Her work is in the collections of numerous museums including the British Museum, Tate, National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, London, UK; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, USA; The Art Institute of Chicago, USA and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, USA.
In 2010, she was made a Dame of the British Empire for services to the Arts in the Queen's Birthday Honours and was awarded the prestigious Grã-Cruz da Ordem de Sant'Iago da Espada from the President of Portugal in 2004. Rego has received several Honorary Doctorates from universities including the University of St. Andrews (1999), University of East Anglia (1999), Rhode Island School of Design (2000), The London Institute (2002), Oxford University (2005), Roehampton University (2005), Faculdade de Belas-Artes at the University of Lisbon (2011), and the University of Cambridge (2015).
She was the recipient of many awards such as the Honors Medal of the city of Lisbon, Portugal (2016), the Maria Isabel Barreno prize (2017), Portuguese Government's Medal of Cultural Merit (2019) and the Lifetime Achievement Award from Harper's Bazaar (2019).
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News
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Paula Rego: The Personal and The Political at Museum Folkwang, Essen
May 16, 2025On view 16 May–7 September 2025, the exhibition brings together around 130 works that trace Rego’s artistic development after her studies at the Slade School, London, in the 1950s.Read More -
Chantal Joffe, Chris Ofili, Celia Paul and Paula Rego feature in Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists at Pallant House
May 6, 2025The exhibition (17 May–2 November 2025) brings together works that explore connections that have shaped British art and offer new perspectives on artistic circles. Read...Read More -
Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood, featuring Chantal Joffe, Wangechi Mutu, Celia Paul and Paula Rego, travels to Dundee Contemporary Arts
April 19, 2025Hayward Gallery Touring’s major group exhibition explores lived experience of motherhood through over 100 artworks. ★★★★★ Reviewing the exhibition in The Observer , Laura Cumming...Read More -
Paula Rego and Adriana Varejão: Between Your Teeth at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon
April 11, 2025On view 11 April–22 September 2025, this major exhibition brings together some 100 works to highlight the connecting threads between the two artists, with particular...Read More -
Paula Rego: Visions of English Literature travels to Lightbox Gallery, Woking
February 1, 2025This Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition (on view at Lightbox Gallery, 1 February–8 June 2025) showcases the artist’s printmaking practice, taking a deep look into the literary influences that have inspired Rego’s work.Read More -
Paula Rego features in Women & Freud: Patients, Pioneers, Artists at the Freud Museum
October 30, 2024Highlighting the women who helped Freud invent psychoanalysis and their legacy in its practice — as well as in the arts and literature to the...Read More -
Two paintings by Paula Rego are now on display at No.10 Downing Street
October 14, 2024Two scenes from Rego's mural Crivelli’s Garden (1990-91) have replaced portraits of Queen Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Raleigh.Read More -
The Times reviews Uncanny Visions: Paula Rego and Francisco de Goya
September 26, 2024★★★★ 'Exposing the primal, the perverse, the forbidden, these artists distil a brooding atmosphere of menace.' – Rachel Campbell JohnstonRead More -
Paula Rego: Power Games at Kunstmuseum Basel
August 29, 2024This comprehensive exhibition (28 September 2024–2 February 2025), the first major presentation of Rego’s work in Switzerland, features paintings and other works drawn from five...Read More -
On view at The Holburne Museum, Bath – Uncanny Visions: Paula Rego and Francisco de Goya
August 28, 2024On view 27 September 2024–5 January 2025, this major exhibition explores the notion of the uncanny in the work of Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) and Paula Rego (1935–2022).Read More -
Jackie Wullschläger previews two major Paula Rego exhibitions in the Financial Times
August 28, 2024Exhibitions at The Holburne Museum, Bath and Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham, both opening September 2024, contextualise Rego’s celebrated Nursery Rhymes works.Read More -
Paula Rego Manifesto at the Casa das Histórias Paula Rego
April 16, 2024This exhibition (18 April–6 October 2024) explores themes from Portugal's history as context for Rego's work over the course of her career.Read More -
On view in Portugal – Paula Rego: Rupture and Continuity
December 13, 2023On view (until 28 July 2024) at the Museu do Côa, the exhibition considers Rego's constant redefinition of her figurative language, highlighting key periods in...Read More -
Paula Rego: Letting Loose is reviewed by Hyperallergic
October 25, 2023Paula Rego’s Animal Farm By AX Mina To enter Paula Rego’s paintings is to step into a tumbling, chaotic world of animals living out modern...Read More -
The Evening Standard includes Ali Banisadr and Paula Rego in the best free London exhibitions
October 13, 2023 Read More -
Paula Rego: Letting Loose features in the Frieze critics’ guide to London exhibitions
October 11, 2023‘It’s not hard to see why these works so significantly boosted Rego’s reputation: they are vibrant, humorous and astonishingly detailed, drawing on illustrations for children’s...Read More -
Harper’s Bazaar features Paula Rego: Letting Loose
October 11, 2023‘The paintings are in keeping with her career-long fascination with the animal nature of humans, often using the poses and expressions of wild creatures to...Read More -
Chloë Ashby reviews Real Families: Stories of Change for The Guardian
October 9, 2023‘Among the best is Chantal Joffe, who remembers realising while she was studying at the Royal College of Art in the early 1990s not only...Read More -
On view in Cambridge: Real Families: Stories of Change, featuring Chantal Joffe, Alice Neel, Celia Paul, Grayson Perry and Paula Rego
October 5, 2023Bringing together more than 120 artworks spanning painting, photography, sculpture and film, the exhibition (6 October 2023–7 January 2024) asks us to consider what makes...Read More -
The Art Newspaper Book Club: Paula Rego
October 3, 2023 Read More -
Hannah Silver for Wallpaper* reviews Paula Rego: Letting Loose
October 2, 2023‘The pictures Paula made during the 1980s were rooted in personal experiences, and she ended up keeping many of them as mementos,’ says Erin Manns,...Read More -
Growing up with Paula Rego – Nick Willing features in The Times
September 2, 2023 Read More -
Laura Cumming reviews Paula Rego: Crivelli’s Garden
July 30, 2023‘…Most powerful of all is the whispered conversation between two women, just off-centre. The wall text identifies them as the Virgin Mary and her cousin...Read More -
Jackie Wullschläger reviews Paula Rego: Crivelli’s Garden
July 20, 2023 Read More -
Paula Rego: Crivelli’s Garden is reviewed in The Times
July 18, 2023 Read More -
Paula Rego: Crivelli’s Garden is reviewed by Ben Luke
July 18, 2023★★★★ Paula Rego had a brutal but often funny and mischievous way of describing life as a painter. Few artists have summed up the experience...Read More -
Paula Rego: Crivelli’s Garden at the National Gallery
July 10, 2023On view 20 July–29 October 2023, this exhibition explores the relationship between Paula Rego’s monumental painting and the 15th-century altarpiece and National Gallery staff that...Read More -
The RA Summer Exhibition 2023 opens at the Royal Academy of Arts
June 13, 2023The RA Summer Exhibition is now open to the public at the R oyal Academy of Arts, London. On view are works by Victoria Miro...Read More -
On view at Tate Modern – Capturing the Moment, featuring Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Alice Neel and Paula Rego
June 13, 2023Subtitled A Journey Through Painting and Photography , the exhibition (13 June 2023–28 January 2024) explores the dynamic relationship between the two mediums through some...Read More -
Works by Kudzanai Violet-Hwami, Chris Ofili, Paula Rego and Stephen Willats feature in Tate Britain’s rehang
May 23, 2023Tate Britain has just opened a complete rehang of its collection — the first time in 10 years that the the gallery's free displays have...Read More -
Alice Neel and Paula Rego are included in The FT’s visual arts roundup of 2022
December 31, 2022Jackie Wullschläger highlights Alice Neel and Paula Rego in The FT’s visual arts round up of the past year. Read in full here Image: Paula...Read More -
Isaac Julien, Alice Neel and Paula Rego feature in The Guardian’s 2023 culture preview
December 27, 2022Isaac Julien, Alice Neel and Paula Rego feature in The Guardian’s art-design to-do list for the year ahead. A solo exhibiton by Isaac Julien is...Read More -
Paula Rego: The Story of Stories at Pera Museum, Istanbul
December 12, 2022The exhibition (23 December 2022–30 April 2023), curated by Alistair Hicks, re-affirms the importance of Rego's work in Portugal in the 1960s and focuses on...Read More -
Paula Rego: There and Back Again at Kestner Gesellschaft
October 30, 2022This major exhibition (30 October 2022–29 January 2023) is centred around the artist’s 1990 masterpiece Crivelli’s Garden . There and Back Again is the first...Read More -
Remembering Paula Rego
June 8, 2022'Paula Rego was a fearless artist who painted life and the world head-on. A remarkable, dazzling, and powerful force for good and for change. I...Read More -
Paula Rego, 1935–2022
June 8, 2022It is with immense sadness that we announce the death of the Portuguese-British artist Dame Paula Rego at the age of 87. She died peacefully...Read More -
‘A room dedicated to the work of Paula Rego… was the best thing.’ – ArtReview reviews the 59th Venice Biennale exhibition The Milk of Dreams
April 27, 2022… So let’s get it out of the way: a room dedicated to the work of Paula Rego in the Giardini (one of several take-breath-and-pause-for-a-moment...Read More -
Paula Rego at Museo Picasso Málaga
April 26, 2022Travelling from Tate Britain and Kunstmuseum Den Haag, the largest retrospective of the artist's work to date is on view in Málaga, 26 April–21 August...Read More -
‘The triumph… is a magnificent presentation of paintings and stuffed figures by Paula Rego’ – Laura Cumming reviews the Venice Biennale
April 24, 2022'Of the 213 artists, only 21 are men, which represents a complete reversal. More striking still is the novelty of walking through half a mile...Read More -
On view at La Biennale di Venezia 2022
April 18, 2022Stan Douglas: 2011 ≠ 1848 23 April–27 November 2022 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2022 Stan Douglas represents Canada at the...Read More -
Paula Rego features on a special cover of La Repubblica’s d magazine for La Biennale di Venezia
April 9, 2022The cover features Rego's The Blue Fairy Whispering to Pinocchio , 1996: 'Fables are important in our culture, they speak of profound things. My aunt...Read More -
Paula Rego: Secrets of Faith is featured in AnOther’s round up of things to do in April
April 5, 2022Paula Rego: Secrets of Faith is featured in AnOther's Brilliant things to do in April . On view at Victoria Miro Venice from 23 April–21...Read More -
The Art Newspaper features Paula Rego interviewed by artists including Tracey Emin, Cecily Brown and Marlene Dumas from her recent exhibition and book The Forgotten
March 8, 2022Read the full feature here Purchase a copy of Paula Rego: The Forgotten Image: Portrait of Paula Rego, 2021 © Nick WillingRead More -
Paula Rego is invited to participate in the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia
February 2, 2022The 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, titled The Milk of Dreams , curated by Cecilia Alemani, will open to the public...Read More -
Paula Rego: Subversive Stories at Arnolfini, Bristol
February 1, 2022Featuring over 80 prints from across Rego’s extensive career, the exhibition (5 February–29 May 2022) explores her interweaving wit and dark humour, delving into the...Read More -
Paula Rego is interviewed by the FT
December 17, 2021'There have not been many certainties in 2021, but one thing has been made crystal-clear: Dame Paula Rego is one of the greatest painters of...Read More -
Paula Rego included in the FT’s 25 most influential women of 2021
December 2, 2021'Rego has risen to become probably the most significant figurative painter of our times. Her intense, hard-hitting images — darkly sexual, deeply ominous, packed with...Read More -
Paula Rego at Kunstmuseum Den Haag
November 27, 2021Travelling from Tate Britain, the largest retrospective of the artist's work to date is on view 27 November 2021–20 March 2022. Read more Image: Paula...Read More -
Paula Rego: The Forgotten reviewed by the Evening Standard
November 18, 2021★★★★ Paula Rego: The Forgotten at Victoria Miro review - raw, shocking and free By Ben Luke Paula Rego’s recent Tate Britain retrospective ended with...Read More -
The Great Women Artists Podcast – Nick Willing on Paula Rego
October 1, 2021In this new episode, Katy Hessel visits the studio of Paula Rego to speak with the artist's son, Nick Willing, about his mother's life and...Read More -
Frieze’s September issue cover story: The Power and Pain of Paula Rego’s Women
August 25, 2021For the cover story of the September 2021 issue of Frieze, Katherine Angel profiles 'one of Britain's most inventive and compelling living artists.' 'These are...Read More -
Paula Rego at Hogarth’s House
July 20, 2021The exhibition (20 July–26 November 2021) features prints from throughout the artist’s career and explores how her admiration for William Hogarth has inspired elements of...Read More -
‘Stunning is an understatement’, Laura Cumming reviews Paula Rego in The Observer
July 11, 2021Violence, eroticism and oppression converge as Rego’s deeply ambiguous work goes straight for the subconscious in this mesmerising seven-decade retrospective A girl in voluminous skirts...Read More -
The Financial Times reviews Paula Rego at Tate Britain
July 7, 2021 Read More -
Paula Rego at Tate Britain
July 7, 2021Since the 1950s, Paula Rego has played a key role in redefining figurative art in the UK and internationally. An uncompromising artist of extraordinary imaginative...Read More -
Paula Rego: ‘Making a painting can reveal things you keep secret from yourself’
July 4, 2021Kate Kellaway from The Observer speaks with Paula Rego ahead of her retrospective opening at Tate Britain from 7 July. Read the full interview here...Read More -
Rachel Campbell-Johnston reviews Paula Rego at Tate Britain
July 4, 2021'Rego, 86, offers us an unflinching view of the instinctive human animal — however creepy or painful, ferocious or cruel. Her pictures are not fantasies:...Read More -
The Financial Times: Paula Rego’s dazzling and radical visions
May 11, 2021The artist’s religiously inspired works, on show at the Cascais museum devoted to her, hand power to women. By Marina Watson Pelaez It is one...Read More -
Now extended until May 2021 – Paula Rego: Obedience and Defiance at IMMA, Dublin
February 8, 2021This major exhibition (18 September 2020–3 May 2021) spans Rego’s entire career from the 1960s, comprising more than 80 works, including paintings never seen before...Read More -
Art Basel OVR Curators’ Picks – Massimiliano Gioni selects Paula Rego
October 30, 2020The New Museum’s artistic director finds themes and trends in OVR:20c, selecting Paula Rego's Study for Caritas , 1993, among works themed around 'Dreams and...Read More -
Paula Rego – Art Basel OVR:20c
October 28, 2020 Read More -
The FT reports on Victoria Miro’s representation of Paula Rego
October 1, 2020Victoria Miro gallery now represents the radical 85-year-old artist Paula Rego and plans a major show in London at the end of next year, aligning...Read More -
Announcing representation of Paula Rego
October 1, 2020Victoria Miro is delighted to announce the representation of Paula Rego . This new collaboration with the artist will be marked by a major exhibition...Read More -
Paula Rego and Josefa de Óbidos: arte religiosa no feminino at Casa das Historías
September 20, 2020 Read More -
Paula Rego – The Scream of Imagination at MACNA
July 9, 2020The exhibition (9 July–18 October 2020) has as its starting point a number of important works by Paula Rego in the Serralves Collection, completed between...Read More -
Frieze reviews Paula Rego: Obedience and Defiance
August 20, 2019How the artist’s work expressed the feeling of being silenced, by Zoe Pilger In 1973, Paula Rego began seeing a Jungian analyst. She was creatively...Read More -
Paula Rego talks to Studio International
June 20, 2019From criticism of dictatorship in her native Portugal in the 60s to the 90s abortion series and Dog Women, Paula Rego’s subjects are as relevant...Read More -
Adrian Searle reviews Paula Rego: Obedience and Defiance
June 12, 2019Rego travels from brutal satire to figures so real you feel you know them in an unmissable, lifetime-spanning survey Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar...Read More
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Books
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Gallery Exhibitions
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Motion in Stillness: Dance and the Human Body in Movement
21 Nov 2024 – 18 Jan 2025 London Gallery IIPresented by Vortic and Victoria Miro, Motion in Stillness: Dance and the Human Body in Movement presents works by artists who all have a relationship with dance or with the human body in movement.Learn More -
Paula Rego: Letting Loose
22 Sep – 11 Nov 2023 London Gallery IAn exhibition of works from the 1980s, a period of liberation and self-discovery that led to great breakthroughs for the artist and saw her first major exhibitions in the UK and the US.Learn More -
Paula Rego: Secrets of Faith
23 Apr – 18 Jun 2022 VeniceCompleted in 2002, the works on view depict episodes from the life of the Virgin Mary – subjects familiar in Christian art radically retold by Rego that are among the most special to the artist.Learn More -
Paula Rego: The Forgotten
19 Nov 2021 – 12 Feb 2022Testament to a career spent exploring hidden narratives and their associated stigmas, The Forgotten encircles themes and subjects that are often masked or concealed – out of politeness or embarrassment – such as mental illness and old age.Learn More
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Contact Form
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