Retrospective of revolutionary painter Paula Rego

Born in Portugal in 1935, Rego spent much of her life in England, where she was one of the few full-time female artists in the 1960s. Rego painted provocative images that were directed against the dictatorship in Portugal, for example, or provided intimate insights into her family life with her husband, who suffered from multiple sclerosis. At the end of the 1990s, Rego's works on the subject of abortion in particular attracted a great deal of attention − abortion was not legalized in her native Portugal until 2007. Rego also took up topics such as human trafficking and female genital mutilation, confronting the art world with motifs rarely seen before. Partly because of these works, Rego is considered a revolutionary in terms of the image of women in painting.

For Paula Rego, it was always of great importance to take up motifs in her art whose content was generally not considered worthy of art. In addition to the abortion series, this also includes references to cartoons or dark versions of Disney films. Rego's aim is to counter the snobbery of the art world, which she perceives as a form of censorship.

Tate Britain is exhibiting over 100 artworks from Rego's oeuvre, tracing its development from the 1950s to the 2010s in all its complexity. Among the paintings on display are several previously rarely shown works, including some that are on view here for the first time in Rego's adopted home of Great Britain.