Paula Rego

Known for:

art

Where to see:

Casa das Histórias Paula Rego

Fun fact(s):

She often used puppets and dolls as models for her paintings

About

Paula Rego was a Portuguese visual artist and printmaker, known for her powerful, unsettling narratives.

She was born in Lisbon in 1935 and grew up under Salazar's dictatorship. Her earliest pieces were courageously political. "Interrogation", painted in 1950 when she was just 15, was a direct response to the regime's oppression.

In 1954, her father sent her to England for a more liberal upbringing. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, where she met her future husband, Victor Willing.

Throughout her career, Rego worked across painting, drawing, collage, and printmaking. In her later years, she turned to pastels.

Her work remained political throughout her life. After Portugal's failed 1998 abortion referendum, she produced a powerful pastel series showing women in the aftermath of illegal procedures. In 2007, that work helped shift public opinion, and abortion was finally legalised. Her other famous works include the Dog Women series, The Dance, and the Jane Eyre series.

Rego died in London in 2022. Her legacy lives on at the striking terracotta-red Casa das Histórias Paula Rego in Cascais.