Paula Rego: Manifesto, by Paula Rego
Casa das Histórias Paula Rego is marking the 50th anniversary of April 25 with the exhibition "Paula Rego: Manifesto".
The new exhibition at the Casa das Histórias Paula Rego evokes the artist's first solo show, presented in 1965 at the Sociedade Nacional de Belas-Artes, in order to recall, on the 50th anniversary of April 25th, the striking themes and events in Portugal's recent history that Paula Rego fearlessly explored in her works.
"Paula Rego: Manifesto" is curated by Catarina Alfaro and Leonor de Oliveira. The exhibition is an initiative of the D. Luís I Foundation and Cascais City Council, as part of the Bairro dos Museus program, which is pursuing the ambitious cultural policy they have jointly defined.
"Paula Rego: Manifesto" is based on the recreation of Paula Rego's very first solo exhibition, presented almost 60 years ago, at a time marked by the intensification of the repressive and persecutory environment of the dictatorship. From April 18, eighteen of the nineteen paintings that made up that historic exhibition, created between 1961 and 1965, will be brought back together and can be seen at the Casa das Histórias Paula Rego.
Some of the works that make up "Paula Rego: Manifesto" have only recently been located, after years of unknown whereabouts, as a result of painstaking research, which is still underway and aims to catalog all the known works that Paula Rego produced between the 1950s and 1960s. The works on loan come from the collections of national institutions such as the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Serralves Foundation, as well as private Portuguese, English and French collections.
In works such as "Manifesto por uma causa perdida" (1965), "Cães famintos" (1963), "Alegoria Britânica" (1962-63), "Tarde de Verão" (1961) and "Fevereiro 1907 (O Regicídio)" (1965), Paula Rego courageously asserted an attitude of resistance against the dictatorship, which she considered anachronistic and absurd. The paintings exhibited in 1965 and again in 2024 communicated her experience as an artist and a woman and revealed the violence of the reality she experienced, which included the Portuguese Colonial War, which she also criticized. To highlight the importance of that exhibition in the Portuguese cultural scene at the time, "Paula Rego: Manifesto" includes documents from that period relating to the organization and critical reception of the 1965 show.
The paintings on display also reveal how plastic experimentalism confounded censorship and challenged the artistic, political and social conventions of the time. The curators of the 2024 exhibition, Catarina Alfaro and Leonor de Oliveira, note that "the multi-material technique that the artist developed at the time, using heterogeneous materials - paints, paper cut out and glued onto the canvas - and the themes addressed, which suggest a critical stance and defiance of authority, manifest an attitude of political resistance through creative practice. His first solo exhibition therefore created, in that dark year of 1965, a space of dissent, confrontation and freedom."
However, the recreation of the original exhibition occupies only 1 of the 8 rooms of the Casa das Histórias Paula Rego dedicated to the show, which will open on April 18. The second part of the exhibition features around 60 works and offers a critical look, through Paula Rego's eyes and experience, at themes such as the post-revolutionary context, as well as the artist's civic intervention in her home country. The curators also point out: "for the first time, a group of works has been brought together that comment on the Revolution of April 25, 1974 and the persistence of iconic elements of the dictatorship in Portuguese society in democracy".
The second part of the exhibition also features works in which Paula Rego tackles issues relating to women's rights, a subject she has dealt with throughout her career, from her early provocations about female pleasure, the constant denunciation of repression, violence and discrimination against women, to more recent series such as "Female genital mutilation" from 2009. Of particular note are the drawings in which she confronts the indifference of the Portuguese, reflected in the large number of abstentions in the June 1998 referendum on the issue of decriminalizing abortion. With these works, the artist intervened more directly in the political discussion in Portugal and "contributed decisively to raising public awareness of the need to take a stand, which would happen in the third referendum held in 2007 and which finally changed Portuguese legislation", the curators recall.
For Catarina Alfaro and Leonor de Oliveira, Paula Rego was a counter-historical artist: "the narrative about the dictatorship and the democratization process has been dominated by the male perspective and actions. In contrast, Paula Rego's work includes in the critical approach to these historical moments not only the female experience, but also the role of women in the struggle for democracy and their rights. The artist's creative work and civic intervention also remind us that democracy is a project under construction and must be constantly reviewed and promoted."
Information: 214 815 660 | geral@fdl.pt
Organization: Cascais City Council | D. Luís I Foundation | Museum Quarter