Paula Rego

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 paintings 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, the Museum Folkwang explores the tension between the supposedly private and the political in Rego’s oeuvre, starting with Rego's 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. The exhibition and accompanying volume aim to show that the questions posed by Paula Rego have not lost their urgency. The resistance of her art is elevated to a design principle. The Portuguese-British artist Paula Rego (1935 Lisbon–2022 London) is one of the most important figurative painters of recent decades.