Paula Rego is an artist who has achieved international fame for her work depicting the human condition and its inconsistencies and subversions. The book "Paula Rego" details her life and work, from her incredible youth spent living in and out of art schools in Portugal and London to her later years working in the art world. This chapter-by-chapter summary will focus on the main points of the book.
Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the life of Paula Rego, including her childhood experiences that shaped her adult work. Growing up in Portugal during a time of great upheaval due to dictatorship, she found solace in sketching and other forms of art. This chapter also looks at her early influences, such as the art of the Renaissance, which shaped her approach to art.
Chapter 2 deals with Rego's formative years in Portugal. The chapter focuses on her academic and artistic education, as well as her struggles to fuse her love of art with the expectations placed on her as a woman in a traditional, macho society. The chapter ends with her eventual journey to London to study at the Slade and her eventual foray into the art world.
Chapter 3 looks at Rego's various artworks. From her early abstracts to her later expressionistic paintings, the chapter examines her artistic development and the ways in which she consistently reinvented her style and technique. It also looks at some of the main themes that characterise her work, such as the depiction of elements of the Portuguese culture or her work as a portrait painter.
Chapter 4 focuses on Rego's interactions with the art world. The chapter looks at her involvement in various art movements such as Pop Art, her international exhibitions, and her collaboration with the Photographer Eikon. It also looks at her efforts to produce critical work that tackles emotive issues that are relevant to modern society and her stellar status at the highest level of the art world.
Chapter 5 looks at Rego's later years and her legacy. The chapter looks at her later experimental works and her move into ceramics, as well as her reception in the modern age. It also looks at her seemingly miraculous comeback from a near tragic encounter with cancer in the late 1980s. It examines her achievement of international recognition and her deserved status as one of the most important and influential artists alive today.
One example from Paula Rego's work comes from her Picture series. The series consists of a series of powerful paintings that depict important and emotive elements of the Portuguese culture. In ‘Yell’, Rego portrays a young girl standing in a doorway with her hands over her ears as large ominous swirls of paint radiate from her head. It’s a powerful image, conveying the silence and fear that often characterized life in Portugal under dictatorship. Through this image, Rego portrays the strength of the youth in the face of oppressive regimes and their struggles. This image is telling of her body of work as a whole, as it conveys her capacity to capture the psychological and social struggles of modern life in her art.
