Paula Rego - Biography | Hughes Deere

Dame Paula Rego was a Portuguese-born British painter of figure, animal, and fantasy subjects. She studied at the Slade School, and was one of Europe’s most influential contemporary figurative artists. A painter of “stories”, her characters enact a variety of roles and depict disquieting tensions below the surface. Her large pastel paintings and sharply drawn etchings are psychologically charged depictions of human dramas and narratives.

Rego received honorary doctorates from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, the University of East Anglia, Norwich, the Rhode Island School of Design, USA, The London Institute, Roehampton University, London, and Oxford University. In 2010 she was created a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (DBE) in The Queen’s Birthday Honours, and won the Mapfre Foundation Drawing Prize, Madrid (2010).

Notable exhibitions include: CalousteGulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (1988); Serpentine Gallery, London (1988); Tate Liverpool, Liverpool (1997); Dulwich Picture Gallery, London (1998); Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (2001); Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto (2004); Tate Britain, London (2005); MuseoNacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2007); National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C. (2008); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2010); Tate Britain, London, (2021).

IShe painted murals in the restaurant of the gallery's new Sainsbury Wing in 1991, and in 1992 she became the first living artist to be given an exhibition in the gallery.

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Paula Rego British/Portuguese, 1935-2022

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