#new figuration

Paula Rego, Portugal, 2005

Original Title: Moça com um feto

Museum: Marlborough Gallery, New York (United States)

Technique: Pastel (120 x 110 cm.)

Paula Rego (1935–2022) was one of the most important and influential artists in the international art scene of recent decades.

Obscenely figurative, her painting is full of narratives where the absolute protagonist is woman, an inhabitant of sordid and hostile universes, strangely familiar even to women who haven't suffered severe trauma.

Rego's paintings speak of family, childhood memories, abortion, and generally the struggle of women in a society that seems unwilling to abandon its aversion to the feminine.

In this particular work, Rego portrays (perhaps self-portrays, or portrays us) as a reflection of social hypocrisy regarding abortion.

The woman rests after the harsh experience of an abortion, and her dead child, still with the umbilical cord protruding from its body, lies in a dirty, clandestine sink. Curtains conceal the scene.

In her numerous works on the subject, Rego depicts women alone, tired, in silence... in barely sketched interiors that are far from a clean, sterilized clinic.

Yvan Theys 

Cheyenne Julien

The park closes at dusk, 2018