Paula Rego - Wonderful Woman No. 82

Paula Rego - Born 1935
Portuguese-British Artist

Added to the album by Cara, a wonderful woman

Born in Portugal, educated in Britain and now a British citizen, considered one of the country's finest living artists. Paula Rego is a reluctant genius, insisting on describing herself as a drawer rather than a painter. She receives goddess-like adoration in Portugal, with a museum named in her honour and having been bestowed with numerous accolades, including honorary doctorates. Similarly in the United Kingdom, she has received many acknowledgements of her talents from the highest echelons of society. The list of solo exhibitions of her work internationally is enormous, as is the number of times her work has be published in catalogues and books.

In my bog entry about Frida Kahlo (Wonderful Woman No. 37), I noted that often in the history of art, women are not given the same credit as male artists. Paula seems to have broken that tradition, though she does point out that it took many years of creativity before her work started to sell.

No other artist has ever come close to capturing Rego’s sense of the phantasmagoria that is female reality.
Germaine Greer, Wonderful Woman No. 41

Stylistically, Paula takes inspiration for stories and folklores inherited from her Portuguese grandmother. Her work tells stories, sometimes mystical and sometimes vividly real. She often depicts the female form in various guises, young and old. There are considered to be undercurrents of sexual connotations in her art and in many pictures the women are perceived as strong, dominating and passionate, there is a true expression of feminism in her imagery. It is also considered that the way the female is portrayed in some pieces is to show her as a human being, rather than a woman in the way women are often seen by the media.

To look over Paula Rego's body of work is to look over the landscape of women's experience: desire, abortion, rape, female circumcision, childbirth, family relationships, dominating and being dominated by men; her masculine female figures are sometimes lonely, but usually fierce and often bent on revenge.
Emine Saner, The Guardian

A woman who has wonderfully captured what it is to be a woman through her art and a very wonderful woman herself.

I can turn the tables and make women stronger than men.
Paula Rego