Paula Rego: Visions of English Literature – 9781853323843

New monograph on the ever popular Paula Rego, the pioneering and much loved artist who died in 2022 at the age of 87. This jewel of a book is the first to focus in detail on a range of Rego’s literary sources, illuminating this key part of her practice. Paula Rego’s radical art drew inspiration from a vast range of sources – from traditional folklore and fairy tales, to literary classics and nursery rhymes.

For Rego, these sources conveyed essential truths about the world, and throughout her life she turned to stories written in the English language. Rego connected with these literary sources in very personal ways, using them to articulate the conditions of her own life as well as work through her own dreams, anxieties, desires, and fears. Paula Rego: Visions of English Literature will present three of the artist’s most ambitious series of graphic works – Jane Eyre, Nursery Rhymes and Peter Pan – in full colour, introduced in new essays by Marco Livingstone and Rosanna McLaughlin.

These, alongside various ephemera – unseen preparatory sketches, etching plates and even Rego’s very own childhood copy of Peter Pan – offer audiences an intimate portrayal of the artist’s lifelong fascination with literature and an insight into how the artist transformed this material into startlingly original, rebellious and unexpected images.