Dame Paula Rego’s fantastic lifetime retrospective, covering seven decades of work is an assault on the senses. Rego ceaselessly manages to shock and horrify in equal measure to drawing out feelings of love, strength, and admiration. This show, currently on at Tate Britain in London, is Rego’s first retrospective in the UK for 15 years and her work is now, at age 86, more relevant than ever.

Rego was born in Portugal in 1934 and grew up in both Portugal and the UK. In 1952 she enrolled at the Slade School of Art in London. There, she was a contemporary of David Hockney and Frank Auerbach. Lucian Freud, a little older, was a visiting tutor, Rego came of age during Salazar’s brutal Portuguese fascist dictatorship, during which human rights were largely not considered. Her early work reflects this, using paint, print, and collage, often in an abstract surrealist way, to show the torture and inhumanity dished out to women. 

Strong undercurrents of violence, brutality, and oppression – taking inspiration from a range of sources including fascism, fairy tales, and the medical establishment’s treatment of women – feature heavily in her storytelling work, which uses a palette of dark Mediterranean colors, in often middle-class environments (reflecting Rego’s comfortable upbringing), and gives a large scale voice to the stout, middle of the road oppressed woman, usually ignored in art. Rego’s woman is very often unfeminine, animalistic, and brutal, a far more realistic depiction of a woman than the idealized type of woman featured by most male artists. Her work has focused on feminism (initially very inspired as a youth by Simone de Beauvoir’s key feminist text, The Second Sex.) Abortion rights feature a lot in her 1990’s work. Rego criticizes the anti-abortion movement and herself has had many abortions. Her abortion works, featured in this exhibition, were widely reproduced by the Portuguese press and helped overturn Portugal’s abortion laws.

Rego’s 2004 Possession series shows a woman in various poses on a couch and questions the medical establishment’s analysis of women’s minds over the past century, starting with the very common diagnosis of hysteria dished out to women in the past.

No one escapes scrutiny by Rego. The Dance is a particularly poignant piece from 1988, a group of people having a moonlit dance. Her husband, fellow artist, Victor Willing, features twice in the piece, once dancing with his wife, and again with a blond woman whose face we can’t see, the infidelity etched on his face.

Rego’s most recent work is perhaps her best. In her 70’s she completed a series of graphic works on Female Genital Mutilation. These works have their own quiet room at the end of the exhibition and do more to educate the viewer on the horrors on FGM than any text can. Rego remains an activist and completely unafraid to tackle society’s toughest issues in her work.

Paula Rego’s Retrospective is currently on at Tate Britain, London, finishing on 24th October. 

Review: Queerguru’s newest contributor Ris Fatah (when he can be bothered) is a successful fashion/luxury business consultant who divides and wastes his time between London and Ibiza. He is a lover of all things queer, feminist, and human rights in general.  @ris.fatah