Dame Paula’s artistic career spanned more than five decades, and she was renowned for her childhood-inspired and fairytale-inspired wonderful paintings. As an artist, she contested gender stereotypes and condemned power abuses.
The renowned Portuguese-British artist Dame Paula Rego passed away at the age of 87, according to the Victoria Miro art gallery.
The London and Venice-based gallery reported that the artist died at home in north London on Wednesday morning, accompanied by her family.
“Portuguese culture has lost one of its most significant and irreverent innovators, a woman who distinguished herself as a human being, an artist, and a woman,” said Carlos Carreiras, Mayor of Cascais, where a museum is dedicated to her work.
Dame Paula’s career in the art world extended more than five decades, and she was known for her childhood recollections and fairytale-inspired wonderful paintings. As an artist, she contested gender stereotypes and condemned power abuses.
Her works sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds and were included in the collections of celebrities like Charles Saatchi and Madonna.
Paula, who was born in 1935 in Lisbon, Portugal, was sent to an English finishing school as a teenager by her anti-fascist father, who did not want his daughter to be restricted to the country’s restrictive atmosphere during Antonio Salazar’s dictatorship.
When she was 15 years old, she painted The Interrogation, a horrifying representation of torture, as a means of expressing her discontent with the world around her. After her potential was recognized, she attended the famed Slade School of Fine Art in London.
She first emerged in popularity in Portugal with semi-abstract pieces that addressed violent or political themes.
She later works drew from the folklore of her region and popular children’s tales like Little Red Riding Hood, but she also drew from her own experiences, both real and imagined, of a childhood filled with young girls, servants, and grandparents, but with a sexual or violent subtext.
Her paintings centered on women, who were typically depicted as strong and self-assured, whereas her males frequently appear childlike or even intoxicated.
“I paint ladies that I know. I depict what I observe on the canvas. I create female heroines because I am one myself “Dame Paula stated in an interview with the Guardian in 2021.
She presented herself as a feminist artist whose work was inspired by sex trafficking and honor killings, among other topics.
In 1998, in response to a failed referendum to legalize abortion in Portugal and having herself through multiple abortions, she created a dramatic series of paintings depicting the hazards of keeping the procedure illegal.
Her Dog Woman pastel paintings, which depict women in several canine stances, and her 1995 picture of Germaine Greer, shown at the National Portrait Gallery in London, are notable among her works.
She obtained honorary doctorates from universities like Oxford and Cambridge and was named a Dame Commander by the Queen in 2010 at a ceremony conducted at Buckingham Palace.
In addition, she was the first artist-in-residence at the National Gallery, where her murals are shown permanently.
After meeting the British painter Victor Willing at the Slade School of Fine Art, she wed him. He died in 1988.
The couple stayed in Portugal for seven years before relocating permanently to London with their three children in 1976, two years after the demise of the regime.
