Paula Rego

Key figure in contemporary painting

Throughout her career, Paula Rego has relentlessly exposed social grievances through her art. The Portuguese- born artist, who made London her adopted home, is therefore one of the most important painters of our time. Her works are more topical than ever. They are dedicated to highly emotional themes such as political and sexualized violence, physical self-determination, and mental health, always with a focus on women's rights. With more than 120 works from seven decades, this catalogue from the Museum Folkwang explores the tension between the supposedly private and the political in Rego's oeuvre–starting with her paintings from the 1950s, which criticize the dictatorship in her home country at the time, through to her famous Abortion series, the artist's personal contribution to the discourse on the legalization of abortion. This book shows that the questions posed by Paula Rego have not lost their urgency.