PAULA REGO (1935-2022) - photo 1
PAULA REGO (1935-2022) - photo 2

PAULA REGO (1935-2022)

Lot 45
27.06.2024 00:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 119 700
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1250593
Lot 45 | PAULA REGO (1935-2022)
Estimate value
£ 80 000 – 120 000
PAULA REGO (1935-2022)
Untitled
oil on canvas
39 ½ x 37 7/8in. (100.2 x 96.2cm.)
Painted in 1957




Provenance

Private Collection, Lisbon (gifted directly from the artist in 1957).



Further details

Held in the same private collection since the year it was made, Untitled (1957) is a rare early painting by Paula Rego. Born in Lisbon, Rego studied at London’s Slade School of Fine Art from 1952 to 1956, and returned to Portugal in 1957, moving into her family home in Ericeira. The present work is one of a number of portraits Rego painted at Ericeira, and depicts a lady from one of the Portuguese families who holidayed there.

At first glance, however, what we see is far from a jovial portrait of a lady en vacances. With a melancholy expression and contemplative eyes, within her portrayal we sense the profoundly defiant and politically active compositions that would cement Rego’s artistic legacy. The artist had of course recently moved to Ericeira from an increasingly liberal London. In the midst of the authoritarian rule of António de Oliveira Salazar, by contrast, Portugal was perhaps the worst-affected nation from the wave of fascism sweeping southern Europe. The Portuguese people were under constant surveillance from Salazar’s PIDE (The State Surveillance and Defense Police) with significant cultural and social freedoms curtailed. It was a world away from the liberty Rego must have felt in London—the culture shock must have been immense.

With true artistic spirit, the injustices present in her new society served as inspiration for Paula Rego. Through these early portraits, following Iberian masters from El Greco to Picasso, she was never shy to reveal the anguish of her sitters—the people—against dictatorship in the region. In this vein, the current sitter has an undeniably dissenting stance; with hands clenched and mind fixed, she portrays a powerful desire for change. This desire for change went on to encapsulate Rego’s portraiture and narratives for the remaining six decades of her career, allowing her to become one of the most active and progressive painters of the 20th Century.

On the verso is a nude portrait of Rego by her partner, Victor Willing, whom she had met at the Slade and had joined her in Ericeira soon after the birth of their first child. The two artists often shared canvases at this time as they began to navigate the artistic landscape. It is an intriguing document of a formative time and place in Rego’s life and art. Despite, and perhaps thanks to the political tension of the time, this was a period of extraordinary creative expansion for Rego. ‘Ericeira was the place that she loved being in as a child and the place where she had the happiest time in her life’, says the couple’s son, filmmaker Nick Willing. ‘It’s the place that, as a child, she remembers most fondly, to where she moved to when she first got together with my father, had her first daughter and where she established herself as a great painter’ (N. Willing quoted in R. M. Vieira, ‘Ericeira is Paula Rego’s Most Powerful Life Memory’, Ericeira Mag, 23 May 2017).
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
Preview
27.06.2024 – 27.06.2024
Phone +44 (0)20 7839 9060
Email
4FQ.AYGKAGLUQ@FO3G@
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Conditions of purchaseConditions of purchase

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