In our previous blog Liorah Tchiprout was compared to Paula Rego, which is a real accolade for a young emerging British Jewish artist, but the comparison is well founded . Liorah paints with a passion and her imagery is , like Rego , often based on literature and myth . She like Rego is a fine print maker and she like Rego also creates narrative series that are full of mystery, and one image triggers a variation that turns into the next image. We are fans of both artists work but this blog now focuses on Rego and a wonderful print that we have recently acquired .
Paula Rego was born in 1935 in Lisbon, Portugal, and in 1952, moved to London to attend the Slade School of Fine Art. Rego launched her artistic career in 1962 when she began exhibiting with The London Group, which counted David Hockney and Frank Auerbach as members. Her early work, heavily influenced by Joan Miró and the Surrealists, verged on abstraction—in part, a reaction to her conservative training. In 1990, Rego was invited to become the first Associate Artist at London’s National Gallery. Around this time, her practice underwent a notable shift: favouring pastels over oils, Rego evolved toward the clear, linear representational style for which she is best known.
In 2009, a museum dedicated to her work, the Casa das Histórias Paula Rego, was opened in Cascais, Portugal. The following year, Rego was named a Dame of the British Empire. Her work resides in numerous important public collections, including the British Museum, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery and Tate Gallery in London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York; and the Berardo Collection Museum in Lisbon. Rego currently lives and works in London.
Rego’s style has evolved from abstract towards representational, and she has favored pastels over oils for much of her career. Her work often reflects aspects of feminism and also inspired by literature, folk-themes, myths and fairytales from her native Portugal and from Britain as well as cartoons and religious texts; Rego creates narrative works that are imbued with mystery.
Paula Rego is drawn to subjects that are well known, drawing her imagery from sources as varied as Peter Pan and Mary Magdalene. Her first experiments with printmaking were tentative, but as she discovered the various techniques open to her, her work became liberated and extremely powerful. She commented: "I turn to etching, and lithography, with a sense of exuberance and relief. In printmaking you can give your imagination full-range and see the results almost immediately. So one image triggers the idea for the next one and so on."
The image above is available for sale artist proof 15/15 in perfect condition floating in a white box frame priced at £3,900 - Contact us for more details .
"The Prince Pig" series. The set illustrates the 16th century Italian tale by Giovanni Francesco Straparola " From Swine to Man". " The narrative verges on obscenity, it is erotic in a fantastic way and it is singularly violent, although, perhaps happily for the viewer's peace of mind, [Rego] eschews in her chosen images most of the extreme violence of the prose." Although "quite savagely violent, the tale has a happy ending in the best frog-into-prince tradition".
"As you scrutinise the odd couple[ in "Prince Pig Courtship"], Rego makes abundantly clear that no good will come of this , literally, bestial union. Here is another perfect Rego paradox that despite its happy ending, this is, like other Rego fairy stories drawn from literature, a grim and horrifying account of two beautiful women involuntarily sacrificed to a smelly, ugly, porcine monster."
"The psychologically acute image [in "Unhappy Courtship] is a subtle description of an impossibly unbearable situation. The flat, almost restricted, colours, while pictorially appropriate, are somehow reticent, leaving the viewer to disentangle what is going on in those inevitably separated minds."
"Seduction of Pig Prince" involves the third sister of the tale, the youngest and most beautiful one, who seduced the monstrous beast in such a way that he would not harm her, eventually bringing about his transformation. " In this image Rego emphasizes the disparity of size and weight between girl and pig. While she is trying to seduce him with kisses and caresses she has to beat the huge weight of the animal which would undoubtedly crush her. Her face is mournful, which suits the circumstances of a picture that is, in effect, a Pietà, an image that often recurs in Rego's works.
T. G. Rosenthal, Paula Rego: The Complete Graphic Work (London: Thames& Hudson, 2012), 208-215.