Paula Rego: The Art Of Story

Paula Rego (1935-2022) is an artist of astonishing power with a unique and unforgettable aesthetic. This study is an invitation to reflect on the complexities of storytelling on which Rego's work draws, emphasizing both the stories the pictures tell, and how it is that they are told.

This monograph sets interpretations of the pictures in the context of Rego's personal and artistic development across sixty years. It studies how Rego's art intersects with the work of both the literary and the visual, and come to understand her rich layering of reference: her use of the Old Masters; fiction, fairy tales and poems; the folk traditions of Rego's native Portugal; and her wider engagement with politics, feminism and more.