Marlborough Fine Art is delighted to present an exhibition devoted to Paula Rego’s preparatory sketches demonstrating how essential drawing is to an understanding of her work. Fundamental to Rego’s practice is her need to draw. It underlies her method and remains at the core of all aspects of her work: paintings, pastels and prints.
The exhibition spans the last three decades and comprises approximately fifty to sixty pieces, giving rare insight into her draughtsmanship and inventiveness. It is when she is drawing that her imagination comes into play and the stories unravel.
Often working from literature, folk tales or religious texts it is the female who dominates Rego’s imagery. Depictions of the mother, lover, sister and carer create the narratives which are imbued with ambiguous sexual undertones and dark secrets. And it is through these narratives that she has challenged political issues, such as the legalisation of abortion, female circumcision and human bondage. |