NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT.- The Yale Center for British Art presents ’Paula Rego: Celestina’s House,’ on view through July 14, 20002. Born in Portugal in 1935, Paula Rego studied at the Slade School in London and married the British painter Victor Willing. She has lived permanently in London since 1976 and is one of the most significant figurative artists working in Britain today. A consummate storyteller, Rego draws inspiration for her subversive and complex narratives of human behavior from books, films, folk legends, and fairytales, as well as memories of her own childhood and the history of art. Above all, Paula Rego addresses the experiences of women and their relationships with others, exploring themes of love and cruelty, desire and disgust, rebellion and domination.

Paula Rego: Celestina’s House focuses on Rego’s recent work, and includes her output of the past four years almost in its entirety. This will be the only showing of the exhibition in North America. It features a new and previously unexhibited series of pastels and lithographs inspired by Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre and completed just weeks before the opening.



Rego likes working ’on the edge,’ and takes risks by unflinchingly tackling difficult subjects. The exhibition includes a challenging group of works produced in 1998 in response to the referendum in Portugal on the legalization of abortion, as well as The Interrogator’s Garden, a disquieting investigation of human cruelty and indifference commissioned by the Foundation for Victims of Torture. The exhibition culminates with Rego’s most recent work, the monumental pastel Celestina’s House, which explores the complexities of matriarchy and familial relationships. Rego does not regard herself as a painter per se, and is more interested in ’drawing things.’ For the past seven years she has been producing ambitious large-scale works using pastel, a medium which she prefers to oil paint. The exhibition shows preparatory drawings and prints alongside major finished pastels, providing a unique opportunity to examine Rego’s complex working processes.



Organized by the Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal, England, this exhibition is generously supported by Marlborough Fine Art (London) Ltd. with assistance from the British Council. The exhibition is curated at the Center by Gillian Forrester, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings.