Paula Rego: Literary Inspirations

One of the most important figurative artists of our time, Dame Paula Rego (b. 1935) is also a sublime and inventive storyteller. Following a major retrospective at Tate Britain, Petersfield Museum is pleased to announce an exhibition of Rego’s work in print, a medium in which she found great imaginative potential.

Displayed alongside Paula Rego’s graphic work will be the stories that inspired her, in artists’ books published by Enitharmon Editions. Rego uses novels, poems, plays and history books as a starting point for her printmaking, ‘like you put on a coat, and then to stand the cold’. Stepping out into the cold, Rego tells her own story; one in which the hero loses and the underdog prevails, and she is free to explore her wildest fears and fantasies.

Image: Girl Reading at Window from Jane Eyre, 2001 – 2002, courtesy Paula Rego and Cristea Roberts Gallery, London ©️ Paula Rego