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Paula Rego: Obedience and Defiance
MK Gallery, Milton Keynes

Once upon a time there was a little Portuguese girl who wanted more than anything to be an artist. Her country held few opportunities for women, so her father sent her to London to study. There she fell in love with a married artist, became pregnant and went home to Portugal to have the baby. Her lover followed and eventually took over the family business; but he was an artist, not a businessman, and the business failed. Back in London with no money, three children and a now sick husband, she turned for inspiration to the folk tales of her childhood. Her work caught the attention of a leading art dealer, and she became an internationally famous artist.

Paula Rego’s life story, as told in her son Nick Willing’s 2017 documentary, Secrets & Stories, recently repeated on BBC4, is a fairy tale with a happy ending. Nevertheless, she has waited until the age of 84 for her adoptive country to give her a major retrospective – not at Tate Britain, but at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes.

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