Photography: DR
The work of Paula Rego, probably the greatest Portuguese artist of the 20th century and the first two decades of the this century – born on 26 January 1935, dying on 8 June this year -, erupts against the silence like lightning in the dark, painting “the truth”, as it appears written in the title of the biographical essay dedicated to her by Inês Pedrosa on “Twenty Great Women of the 20th Century”.
This chapter of Inês Pedrosa’s book summarizes in just ten pages Paula Rego’s extensive and rich biographical and creative journey… Enough, even so, for Ericeira to be highlighted on several occasions. Her work “imposes itself on us by the indomitable power of authenticity” and the “universe of women, tender and grotesque, enchanted and painful, where extremes coincide and the hard truth of bodies is exposed, without guilt or shame” developed many of her roots from this seaside village.
An only child, in 1936 (that is, with only one year old) her parents left to England (where her father, José Fernandes Figueroa Rego – the last two surnames that name the family farm in Ericeira – finished his education as an electrical engineer) and “Paula stayed, alternately, with her paternal grandparents, who gave her freedom and fantasy, and with her maternal aunt, a resentful and unhappy woman who confined her to rules and discouragement.”
Even while she lived in Estoril – in 1938 she had the onset of tuberculosis which made her parents move from Lisbon to Linha, where she lived until she was 16 – summers were spent with his paternal grandparents at the farm in Ericeira, “a delightful place with a grandmother full of chicks in her pockets, a kitchen of infinite stories that exorcised fears through imagination. And in the basement of that house, Paula’s father had made a theatre, where he’d show foreign films – from Charlot to Mickey Mouse, which dazzled tiny Paula.”
she would return to Ericeira in the company of Vic Willling, with whom she would marry in 1959
At the age of 17 she went to London to study Fine Arts, where she would fall in love with Victor Willing, with whom she would return to Ericeira after the birth of her daughter Caroline, who was born in England. “We spent our time working. We had a wine cellar there that was divided in half and I worked on one side and Vic on the other. I’d paint and I’d draw, and draw, and draw, and draw. (…) We were a bit isolated, we didn’t know anyone. We were going to the hotel in Ericeira to be with some Englishmen because Vic didn’t speak Portuguese. We even met very interesting people. We had picnics, it was the life!… We drank a lot. Then we talked a lot, discussed everything. We ordered books from abroad. I read all of Dostoevsky, I read Scott Fitzgerald, I read everything at that time. Also erotic books – L’Histoire d’O, Henry Miller, all that… It was really good! And in the Summer friends from England would come here.”
That’s how they lived for about six years, between 1957 and 1963, when Vic started teaching in London – during this period they only went to England for the births of Victoria (in 1959, the year the couple finally married) and Nicholas, whom AZUL interviewed in 2017.
Paula painted the most melancholy of dances in a big way, a couple drifting in the immobility of the landscape of Ericeira’s lost paradise
The happy times of the couple and Paula would not last much longer: in 1965 Vic had a heart attack and the following year she said farewell to her father and father-in-law, and Vic fell ill with the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. The following decade would be even worse: in 1975 the company inherited from her father was expropriated in the period after the April Revolution; and in 1979 a blow hit and would mark her forever – “she was forced to sell the mythical house in Ericeira, out of an absolute need for money.”
A Dança, 1988, Paula Rego
In 1988, she was working on “A Dança” (whose action takes place with Milreu Fort as a background) when her husband dies. He had suggested that she’d paint this picture, as had happened on other occasions when her ideas would run out – «Paint people dancing,” he had told her. “And Paula painted the most melancholy of dances in a big way, a couple drifting in the immobility of the landscape of Ericeira’s lost paradise”. When Vic passed away, she had to learn to let go of that comforting echo and to believe more than ever in herself and her work.
“Ericeira’s paradise lost”, to which the life and work of Paula Rego are viscerally linked – even more than umbilically – was the strongest memory that this enormous woman kept until the end of her earthly existence… Her Work will last beyond those who did not do her justice in life.
Esta publicação também está disponível em | This article is also available in: Portuguese (Portugal)
