The Tate Britain Museum of Art is featuring a retrospective of the Portuguese artist Paula Rego, whose paintings and ideas SPW periodically revisit to illustrate local challenges, especially to women’s rights. In 2016, when two women died in Rio de Janeiro as a result of clandestine and unsafe abortion, Sonia Corrêa recalled the artist’s paintings on the occasion of the defeat, in a 1998 referendum, of the proposal to legalize abortion in Portugal. In 2021, the challenges are still there and are immense and global, with the resurgence of ultra-rightist political forces – both in Brazil and abroad – that encircle, threaten and strike down women’s rights and freedoms. The retrospective of Paula Rego’s work is providential in times of desdemocratization.
Check out articles on Paula Rego’s work, career and personality.
Paula Rego: ‘Making a painting can reveal things you keep secret from yourself’ – The Guardian
Paula Rego: The artist who helped change the world – BBC
At Tate Britain, Celebrating a Mischievous, Subversive Talent – New York Times
The mysterious and unsettling pictures of Paula Rego – Newstatesman
Paula Rego review – phenomenal paintings, shame about the decor – The Guardian