PAULA REGO

Paula Rego in her London studio, 2021. Photography Gautier Deblonde © Gautier Deblonde. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro

Paula Rego, the Portuguese-born British figurative artist known for her uncompromising, unsettling paintings, prints and sculptural works, died on Wednesday 8th June, aged 87. The news was broken to the world by Victoria Miro, the gallery which has represented her since 2020.

Rego was born to a prosperous family in Lisbon in 1935, and, having attended finishing school in London, won a place at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1952. In the sixties she became a prominent member of the London Group, alongside the likes of Frank Auerbach and David Hockney. She became the first artist-in-residence at the National Gallery in 1990, and in 2009 a museum dedicated to her work was opened in Cascais, Portugal, where she had grown up. She enjoyed a major and highly acclaimed retrospective at Tate Britain last summer. 

Her psychologically charged work, at first largely abstract but increasingly figurative, drew upon folk stories, myths and fairy tales, as well as politics, feminism, art history and her own life story. She is perhaps best known for her richly layered tableaux, and her Abortion and Dog Women series, the latter painted in response to the death of her beloved husband, the artist Victor Willing, in 1988. 

British Art Fair director Gay Hutson comments: “Rego is undoubtedly one of the greats of British art over the past seven decades, who played a major role in redefining figurative art. She was an uncompromising artist who revolutionised the way women are represented. The retrospective at Tate Britain last year was a fantastic - albeit belated - tribute to her career.”

Paula Rego is survived by three children, Caroline, Victoria, and Nick Willing.