Paula Rego (1935-2022)

The Portuguese-British artist Paula Rego, who died in London on June 8, often worked with topics particular to women and their bodies. She called the textile and papier-mâché characters she made since the 1970s bonecos – the Portuguese word for dolls. Part magical and part bestial, these enigmatic personalities appear with increasing frequency in her paintings, prints and drawings in the early 2000s. Often staged alongside other textiles, clothes and live models they attest to Rego’s attention to the influence of materials that dress both our real and imagined lives.

Living in London from the 1950s, Rego remained deeply connected to her country of birth. Early work deals with her native Portugal and the country’s long reigning right-wing dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar. Created in response to the failed 1998 referendum to legalise abortion in Portugal, her Abortion Series (1998) depicts women forced to endure backstreet abortions and was credited with contributing to the success of the second referendum in 2007 that legalised abortion in the country. The triptych Human Cargo (2007–8) refers to trafficking, while Night Bride (2009) and Escape (2009) address female genital mutilation.

Rego often captured multiple emotions in the same face and this uncanny ability also appears in some of her bonecos. Sea Nymph (1978) has the characteristic boxy angles often seen in the bodies she drew and painted but the pieced skin of the face and breasts is reminiscent of plastic surgery incisions. Her legs and underskirt are covered with the blue and red stripes of ticking fabric, but the lace-trimmed bodice of crumples below her exposed breasts. Unlike the defiant faces of many of the women she painted, here the weight of time, or shame, seem to have twisted the worried eyes of her heavy head away from the viewer’s gaze, towards a more distant horizon.

Curated by Elena Crippa with Zuzana Flašková, Paula Rego is on view at Museo Picasso Malaga through 21 August 2022.