Throughout her career, Rego has produced works that give visibility and a voice to sexual assault against women, addressing subjects specifically from the perspective of women’s experience as well as feminine power, physicality and strength. In 2008–2009, the artist created a multimedia work for the Foundling Museum that, based on an altarpiece, explores the violence effected on women’s bodies. One of the panels shows a rape, and this is an associated work. Writing about the Foundling Museum work in the Thames & Hudson book Paula Rego: The Art of Story, Deryn Rees-Jones notes that, ‘While the subject matter is stark, the dynamics of gesture and expression are not uncomplicated. What makes these images so moving is an approach that refuses sensationalism. These events in their horror must be recorded, Rego seems to insist, but they must also be represented in a manner that neither re-enacts trauma nor disempowers women.’

About the artist

Born in 1935 in Lisbon, Portugal, Dame Paula Rego RA lives and works in London. The largest and most comprehensive retrospective of Rego’s work to date commenced this year at Tate Britain (7 July–24 October 2021) and will travel to Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Netherlands (27 November 2021–20 March 2022) followed by Museo Picasso Malagá, Spain.

Other current and recent major solo exhibitions include Museum De Reede, Antwerp, Belgium (30 July–25 October 2021), and Paula Rego: Obedience and Defiance, curated by Catherine Lampert, which travelled from MK Gallery, Milton Keynes to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh in 2019–2020 and was on view at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin from September 2020–May 2021. Rego’s work is in the collections of major museums including the British Museum, London, UK; National Gallery, London, UK; National Portrait Gallery, London, UK; Tate, UK and the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK.