‘I paint because I can’t help it’
DAME PAULA REGO is Portugal’s most famous living artist and hardly less acclaimed in her adopted England, where, through marriage to the English painter Victor Willing (1928-88), she has been London-based for most of her career. In Portugal, she has a purpose-built museum in her honour, Casa das Histórias Paula Rego (The House of Stories Paula Rego); in England, she has been awarded honorary doctorates from Oxford and Cambridge and was appointed DBE in 2010. A full Tate retrospective is overdue, but finally here; regarding the professional ascendancy of women, spectacularly in art —her pioneering contribution here triumphantly saluted—delay proves timely.
There are 110 works, a wonderful array of different stylistic periods revealing the human comedy from; they are more fully explored in ‘Paula Rego: An Enduring Journey’ at the Cristea Roberts Gallery, a vital adjunct, with even some unseen etchings printed from recently discovered plates.
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