The Museum Folkwang in Essen is dedicating a comprehensive retrospective to the important artist Paula Rego (1935-2022) entitled "The Personal and The Political". The exhibition shows over 120 works by the Portuguese-British painter, whose impressive paintings and drawings have been known for decades for their relentless examination of power structures, gender roles and social inequality. Rego, who had been working in England since the 1950s, repeatedly drew on personal experiences to create powerful visual worlds of collective memory. Particularly impressive is her iconic Abortion series from the 1990s, in which she commented on the political debate surrounding the abortion ban in Portugal and thus created a work of socially explosive power.
The exhibition not only provides an in-depth insight into the oeuvre of one of the most important figurative artists of our time, but also places it in a wider socio-political context. Transforming personal moments into images of collective experience was a central concern of feminist movements in the 1960s and 70s, which today seems more relevant than ever. The retrospective impressively traces Rego's artistic development and, in addition to paintings and drawings, also shows dolls that served as models for her complex compositions and are now considered autonomous works of art in their own right.
