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A unique insight into the life and work of celebrated painter Paula Rego directed by her son, film-maker Nick Willing. Notoriously private and guarded, Rego opens up for the first time, surprising her son with secrets and stories of her unique life, battling fascism, a misogynistic art world and manic depression.

Paula Rego, Secrets & Stories is a feature documentary produced by Kismet Films for the BBC which was first broadcast at 9 pm on BBC TWO Saturday 25 March 2017.

On contemporary Portuguese artist Paula Rego

288 p. ; 31 cm

Dame Paula Rego DBE RA (born 26 January 1935), is a Portuguese-born visual artist who is particularly known for her paintings and prints based on storybooks. Rego’s style has evolved from abstract towards representational, and she has favoured pastels over oils for much of her career. Her work often reflects feminism, coloured by folk-themes from her native Portugal. Rego studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London and was an exhibiting member of the London Group, along with David Hockney and Frank Auerbach. She was the first artist-in-residence at the National Gallery in London. She lives and works in London. Early life Rego was born on 26 January 1935 in Lisbon, Portugal.[1] Her father was an electrical engineer who worked for the Marconi Company.[2] Although this gave her a comfortable middle-class home, the family was divided in 1936 when her father was posted to work in the United Kingdom. Rego's parents left her behind in Portugal in the care of her grandmother until 1939. Rego's grandmother was to become a significant figure in her life, as she learned from her grandmother and the family made many of the traditional folktales that would one day make their way into her art work.[3] Rego's family were keen Anglophiles, and Rego was sent to the only English-language school in Lisbon's district at the time, Saint Julian's School in Carcavelos, which she attended from 1945 to 1951.[1] Although nominally a Catholic and living in a devoutly Catholic country, St Julian's School was Anglican and this combined with the hostility of Rego's father to the Catholic Church served to create a distance between her and full-blooded Catholic belief. Rego has described herself as having become a "sort of Catholic", but as a child she possessed a sense of Catholic guilt and a very strong belief that the Devil was real.[4] In 1951, Rego was sent to the United Kingdom to attend a finishing school called The Grove School, in Sevenoaks, Kent. Unhappy there, Rego attempted in 1952 to start studies in art at the Chelsea School of Art in London, but was advised against this choice by her legal guardian in Britain, David Phillips, who had heard that a young woman had become pregnant while a student there. He suggested to her parents that The Slade School of Fine Art was a more respectable choice and helped her achieve a place there. She attended the Slade School from 1952 to 1956.[5] At the Slade, Rego had met her future husband, Victor Willing, who was also a student there.[1] In 1957, Rego and Willing left London to live in Ericeira, Portugal.[1] They were able to marry in 1959 following Willing's divorce from his first wife, Hazel Whittington.[6] Three years later Rego's father bought the couple a house in London, at Albert Street in Camden Town, and Rego's time was spent divided between Britain and Portugal. In 1966, Rego's father died, and the family electrical business was taken over, unwillingly, by Rego's husband, although he had himself been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.[3] The company failed in 1974 during the Portuguese revolution that overthrew the country's right-wing Estado Novo dictatorship, when its production works were taken over by revolutionary forces, even though Rego's family had been supporters of the political Left. As a result, Rego, Willing and their children moved permanently to London and spent most of their time there until Willing's death in 1988. Career Although Rego was commissioned by her father to produce a series of large-scale murals to decorate the works' canteen at his electrical factory in 1954, while she was still a student, Rego's artistic career effectively began in early 1962, when she began exhibiting with The London Group,[8] a long-established artists' organization which had David Hockney and Frank Auerbach among its members. In 1965, she was selected to take part in a group show, Six Artists, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, ICA, in London.[9] That same year she had her first solo show at the Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes (SNBA) in Lisbon.[3] She was also the Portuguese representative at the 1969 São Paulo Art Biennial.[10] Between 1971 and 1978 she had seven solo shows in Portugal, in Lisbon and Oporto, and then a series of solo exhibitions in Britain, including at the AIR Gallery in London in 1981, the Arnolfini in Bristol in 1983, and the Edward Totah Gallery in London in 1984, 1985 and 1987.[11] In 1988, Rego was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon and the Serpentine Gallery in London.[12] This led to her being invited to become the first Associate Artist at the National Gallery, London in 1990, in what was the first of a series of artist-in-residence schemes organized by the gallery.[13][2] From this emerged two sets of work. The first was a series of paintings and prints on the theme of nursery rhymes, which was taken around Britain and elsewhere by the Arts Council of Great Britain and the British Council from 1991 to 1996. The second was a series of large-scale paintings inspired by the paintings of Carlo Crivelli in the National Gallery, known as Crivelli’s Garden which is now housed in the main restaurant at the gallery. Other exhibitions include a retrospective at Tate Liverpool in 1997, Dulwich Picture Gallery in 1998, Tate Britain in 2005, and Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 2007. A major retrospective of her work was held at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid in 2007, which travelled to the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. the following year. In 2008, Rego exhibited at the Marlborough Chelsea in New York, and staged a retrospective of her graphic works at the Ecole Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Nimes, France. As well as showing at Marlborough Fine Art in London in 2010, the art critic Marco Livingstone organised a retrospective of her work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterrey, Mexico, which was later shown at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo in Brazil. In 2011, Rego appeared in the documentary Looking for Lowry with Ian McKellen as an interviewee commenting on her experience with Lowry at the Slade School of Fine Art. Rego's art work can be seen in many public and private institutions around the world. The artist has 43 works in the collection of the British Council, ten works in the collection of the Arts Council of England, and 46 works at the Tate Gallery, London. Rego is currently represented by Marlborough Fine Art. tyle and influences Rego is a prolific painter and printmaker, and in earlier years also produced collage work.[15] Her well-known depictions of folk tales[16] and images of young girls, made largely since 1990, bring together methods of painting and printmaking that emphasise strong, clearly drawn forms, in contrast to the looser style of her earlier paintings. In her earliest works, such as Always at Your Excellency's Service, painted in 1961, Rego was strongly influenced by Surrealism, and particularly the work of Joan Miró.[17] This shows itself not only in the type of imagery that appears in these works, but in the method employed, which is based on the Surrealist idea of automatic drawing, in which the artist attempts to disengage the conscious mind from the making process in order to allow the unconscious mind to direct the making of an image.[18] At times these paintings almost verge on abstraction; however, as exemplified by Salazar Vomiting the Homeland, painted in 1960, when Portugal's right-wing dictator Salazar was in power, even when her work veered toward abstraction, a strong narrative element remains in place.[19] There are two principal reasons why Rego adopted a semi-abstract style in the 1960s. First, abstraction dominated in avant-garde artistic circles at the time, which had set figurative art on the defensive. But Rego was also reacting against her training at the Slade School of Art, where a very strong emphasis had been placed on anatomical figure drawing. Under the encouragement of her fellow student and later husband Victor Willing, Rego kept alongside her official school sketchbooks a "secret sketchbook" when she was at the Slade, in which she made free-form drawings of a type that would have been frowned upon by her tutors.[20] Rego's apparent dislike of crisp drawing techniques in the 1960s shows itself not only in the style of such works as Faust and her Red Monkey series of the 1980s, which resemble expressionistic comic-book drawing, but in her acknowledged influences at the time, which included Jean Dubuffet and Chaim Soutine.[21] A notable change in Rego's style emerged in 1990, following her appointment as the first Associate Artist of the National Gallery in London, under what was effectively an artist-in-residence scheme. The remit of the Associate Artist is to "make new work that in some way connects to the National Gallery Collection." [22] The National Gallery is overwhelmingly an Old Masters collection and Rego seems to have been pulled back towards a much clearer, or tighter, linear style reminiscent of the highly-wrought drawing technique that she was taught at the Slade. The result was a series of works which came to characterise the popular perception of Rego's style, combining strong clear drawing with depictions of equally strong women in sometimes disturbing situations. Works such as Crivelli's Garden have clear links to the paintings by Carlo Crivelli in the National Gallery, but other works made at the time, such as Joseph's Dream and The Fitting, draw from works by Old Masters such as Diego Velázquez, in terms of subject matter and spatial representation.[23] Rego gave up working with collage in the late 1970s, and began using pastels as a medium in the early 90s. She continues to use pastels to this day, almost to the exclusion of oil paint.[24] Among the most notable works made in pastel are in her Dog Women series, in which women are shown sitting, squatting, scratching and generally behaving as if they were dogs. This antithesis of what is considered feminine behaviour, and many of her other works in which there appears to be either the threat of female violence or its actual manifestation, have caused Rego to be associated with feminism. She has acknowledged reading at a young age Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, a key feminist text, and that this made a deep impression on her.[25] Her work also seems to chime with the interest in Freudian criticism shown by feminist writers on art in the 1990s, such as Griselda Pollock, with works such as Girl Lifting up her Skirt to a Dog of 1986 and Two Girls and a Dog of 1987 appearing to have disturbing sexual undertones.[26] However, Rego has been known to rebuke critics who read too much sexual content into her work.[24] Another explanation for Rego's depiction of women as unfeminine, animalistic or brutal beings is that this reflects the physical reality of women as human beings in the physical world, rather than the idealised female type in the minds of men.

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the artist Paula Rego. Born in Portugal, she was an only child, and spent her days sitting with the maids as they told tales around the kitchen table. Now she makes up stories about the people she knows and weaves them into her pictures. Like those early fairytales, her portraits always have a touch of danger about them. If you look the devil in the face, she says, face your fears and paint them - then they lose the power to scare you.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Da Me O Braco Anda Dai by Blanc/BarbosaBook: Tender Is The Night by F. Scott FitzgeraldLuxury: Pencil and paper

In these powerful and stylishly written essays, Maria Manuel Lisboa dissects the work of Paula Rego, the Portuguese-born artist considered one of the greatest artists of modern times. Focusing primarily on Rego’s work since the 1980s, Lisboa explores the complex relationships between violence and nurturing, power and impotence, politics and the family that run through Rego’s art. Taking a historicist approach to the evolution of the artist’s work, Lisboa embeds the works within Rego’s personal history as well as Portugal’s (and indeed other nations’) stories, and reveals the interrelationship between political significance and the raw emotion that lies at the heart of Rego’s uncompromising iconographic style. Fundamental to Lisboa’s analysis is an understanding that apparent opposites – male and female, sacred and profane, aggression and submissiveness – often co-exist in Rego’s work in a way that is both disturbing and destabilising. This collection of essays brings together both unpublished and previously published work to make a significant contribution to scholarship about Paula Rego. It will also be of interest to scholars and students of contemporary painting, Portuguese and British feminist art, and the political and ideological aspects of the visual arts.

In these powerful and stylishly written essays, Maria Manuel Lisboa dissects the work of Paula Rego, the Portuguese-born artist considered one of the greatest artists of modern times. Focusing primarily on Rego’s work since the 1980s, Lisboa explores the complex relationships between violence and nurturing, power and impotence, politics and the family that run through Rego’s art. Taking a historicist approach to the evolution of the artist’s work, Lisboa embeds the works within Rego’s personal history as well as Portugal’s (and indeed other nations’) stories, and reveals the interrelationship between political significance and the raw emotion that lies at the heart of Rego’s uncompromising iconographic style. Fundamental to Lisboa’s analysis is an understanding that apparent opposites – male and female, sacred and profane, aggression and submissiveness – often co-exist in Rego’s work in a way that is both disturbing and destabilising. This collection of essays brings together both unpublished and previously published work to make a significant contribution to scholarship about Paula Rego. It will also be of interest to scholars and students of contemporary painting, Portuguese and British feminist art, and the political and ideological aspects of the visual arts.

In these powerful and stylishly written essays, Maria Manuel Lisboa dissects the work of Paula Rego, the Portuguese-born artist considered one of the greatest artists of modern times. Focusing primarily on Rego’s work since the 1980s, Lisboa explores the complex relationships between violence and nurturing, power and impotence, politics and the family that run through Rego’s art. Taking a historicist approach to the evolution of the artist’s work, Lisboa embeds the works within Rego’s personal history as well as Portugal’s (and indeed other nations’) stories, and reveals the interrelationship between political significance and the raw emotion that lies at the heart of Rego’s uncompromising iconographic style. Fundamental to Lisboa’s analysis is an understanding that apparent opposites – male and female, sacred and profane, aggression and submissiveness – often co-exist in Rego’s work in a way that is both disturbing and destabilising. This collection of essays brings together both unpublished and previously published work to make a significant contribution to scholarship about Paula Rego. It will also be of interest to scholars and students of contemporary painting, Portuguese and British feminist art, and the political and ideological aspects of the visual arts.

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Paula Rego is one of the most important artists working in Britain today — she’s brilliant, intense and a bit bonkers. Why is she so perversely overlooked?https://t.co/tqesSYSuSq https://t.co/HJPAUHOrH0 Source: https://twitter.com/thesundaytimes/status/1417499848216088585 Uploader: The Sunday Times

A unique insight into the life and work of celebrated painter Paula Rego directed by her son, film-maker Nick Willing. Notoriously private and guarded, Rego opens up for the first time, surprising her son with secrets and stories of her unique life, battling fascism, a misogynistic art world and manic depression

Um poderoso retrato da artista realizado pelo seu filho, o cineasta Nick Willing, cujo legado vai sobreviver ao tempo, ilustrado visualmente em pastel, carvão e tinta a óleo. Maria Paula Figueiroa Rego nasceu em Lisboa, a 26 de Janeiro de 1935. Iniciou os estudos no Colégio Integrado Monte Maior, em Loures, seguindo para a St. Julian's School, em Carcavelos. Revelou, desde muito cedo, um grande talento para as artes. Incentivada pelo pai, partiu para Londres, onde estudou na Slade School of Fine Art, até 1956. Ali conheceu o pintor Victor Willing (1928-1988), com quem veio a casar. No início da década de 1970, com a falência da empresa familiar, vende a quinta da Ericeira, onde morava, e radica-se em Londres com o marido e os três filhos: Victoria, Caroline e Nick Willing (o realizador deste filme). Em 2014, Nick sentou-se com a mãe, então com 80 anos, e durante um período dois anos ouviu o que ela tinha para contar. Com isso, fez um filme. "Eram histórias que eu nunca tinha ouvido, que explicam muito da minha vida e da dela, de uma maneira que me fez entender várias das suas obras", explica. "O meu filme não é sobre a artista, é sobre a pessoa", sublinha. "O que acontece é que ela foi sempre artista primeiro, pessoa depois e mãe em terceiro. Eu queria descobrir a pessoa por trás da pintora." Conta que a mãe "foi sempre um grande mistério" e que quando, na tal conversa que veio a resultar neste filme, ela abriu uma porta para o seu mundo, ele aproveitou para fazer todas as perguntas que guardava. Em simultâneo à estreia do filme, Paula Rego inaugura a exposição "Histórias & Segredos" na Casa das Histórias, em Cascais, com 80 obras suas e do marido, Victor Willing, algumas das quais inéditas em Portugal. Na mesma altura, a artista recebe Carta Branca da Cinemateca Portuguesa para programar um ciclo de dez filmes.

In this beautifully written monograph, Maria Manuel Lisboa explores the work of Paula Rego from various interconnected perspectives – iconographic, semiological and historiographic.This book is an urgent and necessary addition to the bibliography on Paula Rego, and an important contribution to scholarship about the artist, but also to contemporary painting, Portuguese art, feminist art, and areas of scholarship relating to the handling of the political and ideological in the visual arts. —Ruth Rosengarten In these powerful and stylishly written essays, Maria Manuel Lisboa dissects the work of Paula Rego, the Portuguese-born artist considered one of the greatest artists of modern times. Focusing primarily on Rego’s work since the 1980s, Lisboa explores the complex relationships between violence and nurturing, power and impotence, politics and the family that run through Rego’s art. Taking a historicist approach to the evolution of the artist’s work, Lisboa embeds the works within Rego’s personal history as well as Portugal’s (and indeed other nations’) stories, and reveals the interrelationship between political significance and the raw emotion that lies at the heart of Rego’s uncompromising iconographic style. Fundamental to Lisboa’s analysis is an understanding that apparent opposites – male and female, sacred and profane, aggression and submissiveness – often co-exist in Rego’s work in a way that is both disturbing and destabilising. This collection of essays brings together both unpublished and previously published work to make a significant contribution to scholarship about Paula Rego. It will also be of interest to scholars and students of contemporary painting, Portuguese and British feminist art, and the political and ideological aspects of the visual arts.

In this beautifully written monograph, Maria Manuel Lisboa explores the work of Paula Rego from various interconnected perspectives – iconographic, semiological and historiographic.This book is an urgent and necessary addition to the bibliography on Paula Rego, and an important contribution to scholarship about the artist, but also to contemporary painting, Portuguese art, feminist art, and areas of scholarship relating to the handling of the political and ideological in the visual arts. —Ruth Rosengarten In these powerful and stylishly written essays, Maria Manuel Lisboa dissects the work of Paula Rego, the Portuguese-born artist considered one of the greatest artists of modern times. Focusing primarily on Rego’s work since the 1980s, Lisboa explores the complex relationships between violence and nurturing, power and impotence, politics and the family that run through Rego’s art. Taking a historicist approach to the evolution of the artist’s work, Lisboa embeds the works within Rego’s personal history as well as Portugal’s (and indeed other nations’) stories, and reveals the interrelationship between political significance and the raw emotion that lies at the heart of Rego’s uncompromising iconographic style. Fundamental to Lisboa’s analysis is an understanding that apparent opposites – male and female, sacred and profane, aggression and submissiveness – often co-exist in Rego’s work in a way that is both disturbing and destabilising. This collection of essays brings together both unpublished and previously published work to make a significant contribution to scholarship about Paula Rego. It will also be of interest to scholars and students of contemporary painting, Portuguese and British feminist art, and the political and ideological aspects of the visual arts.