Events

The Portuguese-British artist Paula Rego (1935–2022) ranks among the foremost and most exciting figurative painters of recent decades. The Kunstmuseum Basel mounts her first exhibition in Switzerland, showcasing key works from the oeuvre she built in over half a century. The fabulous world of Portuguese-British artist Paula Rego enthrals us with a frenzy of images, replete with cryptic humour, and as frankly dramatic as they are poignant. Rego’s oeuvre commands enormous power, above all where the fates of women are at stake. Figures, who in Walt Disney’s world represent perfect princesses or otherworldly witches, are in Rego’s hands depicted as perfectly natural women. In her work, it is women – nurturing, aiding and coping with everyday life – who merit portrayal. One thing never featuring in her works, however, is the happy end. Throughout the decades, Rego has crafted complex, highly charged scenes of nightmarish proportions, revealing profound insights into human relations, into the dynamics of social, political and sexual power. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung referred to her artworks as “crime scenes."