Paula Rego was born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1935 and was sent to England to attend a finishing school in Kent in 1951, prior to studying at the Slade School of Fine Art (1952–56). She received her first commission as a student and went on to represent Portugal at the São Paolo Art Biennial in 1969; in 1990 Rego became the National Gallery’s first Associate Artist and has since had major UK retrospectives at Tate Liverpool, Tate Britain, Dulwich Picture Gallery, and the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Her work addresses feminist themes interwoven with fairy tales from her native Portugal.
Artist Paula Rego was born in 1935 in Lisbon, Portugal. In 1936, her father, who worked for the Marconi Company, was posted to the UK, and her parents left her in Portugal in the care of her grandmother until 1939. Rego cites her grandmother, from whom she learned the nursery rhymes and fairy tales that frequently appear as subjects in her paintings and illustrations, as a major influence on her work. Since her parents were Anglophiles, Rego attended an English-language Anglican school in Lisbon (1945–51), and was then sent to England to complete her education at the Grove School, in Sevenoaks, Kent. Unhappy there, and dissuaded from applying to Chelsea School of Art, she went on to study at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1952 to 1956, where she also met fellow artist Victor Willing with whom she began a relationship. In 1954 her depiction of Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood won first prize in the Summer Composition Competition. In the same year, Rego received her first major commission from her father, who asked her to create murals for his company's canteen. In 1957, she returned to Portugal, pregnant (following earlier abortions) with the first of her three children by Willing; he joined her after the birth and they were married in 1959, after his divorce from his first wife. In 1962 they moved to a house, given to them by her father, in Albert Street, Camden Town, in north London and she began exhibiting with The London Group, also holding her first solo show at the Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes in Lisbon the same year. In the 1960s she mainly explored the medium of collage, creating controversial and overtly political works in a surrealist manner, inspired by her childhood and the Fascist regime in Portugal. When she first exhibited these collages at the Galeria de Arte, Lisbon in 1965, they provoked and shocked the audience. In the same year, she was also selected to participate in a group show, Six Artists, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), in London. In 1966, on the death of her father (to whom she had been very close), she moved back to Lisbon with her husband - who had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis - to take over the family business. Rego subsequently represented Portugal in the 1969 São Paolo Art Biennial, but after the failure of the family company during the Portuguese Revolution, she permanently relocated to London with her family in 1974.
In 1988, Rego was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon and the Serpentine Gallery in London. Following this, in 1990, she became the National Gallery’s first Associate Artist and completed two major series: a travelling exhibition of paintings and prints entitled Nursery Rhymes, which the British Council exhibited across the UK and the rest of Europe; and Crivelli's Garden, inspired by the fifteenth-century Venetian painter, which now hangs in the National Gallery’s main restaurant. Since her residency, she has held retrospectives at Tate Liverpool (1997), Dulwich Picture Gallery (1998), Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (2007), and Tate Britain (2004 and 2021). Her work addresses feminist themes and in 1998 she created the influential series Untitled: The Abortion Pastels, reflecting on Portugal's failed referendum to legalise abortion. In 2004 she was commissioned by the Royal Mail to design stamps inspired by Charlotte Brontë's novel, Jane Eyre. Her style is heavily influenced by comic books, illustrations to fairytales, surrealism and art brut, as well as Old Masters, including Velazquez and Italian Renaissance painters. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honours in 2010. In 2017 the BBC premiered the biopic, Paula Rego: Secrets and Stories, directed by her son, Nick Willing and in 2021 the UK's largest and most comprehensive retrospective of her work to date was held at Tate Britain.
Paula Rego died on 8 June 2022 in London, England. Her work is represented in numerous UK collections including the Arts Council Collection, British Council, British Museum, National Gallery and Tate, as well as many international collections.