My Choice - Works
selected by Paula Rego from the British Council Collection
10 February - 12 July
2011
The Proles Wall Years
10 February - 19 June 2011
«
At the end of the room were big, black, cardboard boxes, stacked
on top of each other, full of etchings and prints. I had the impression that
some had not been opened for years and years, that no-one had ever looked at
some of them. I came across a magic world of places so beautifully drawn, houses
with windows of various sizes, landscapes and townscapes, often mysterious. I
felt my heart beating not knowing what lay often I didnt know who had
done them. Some I had seen before, but others not.(
)».
- Paula Rego, from the exhibition catalogue, December 2010
From 10 February until 12 June 2011, the Casa das
Histórias Paula Rego will present 120 works selected by Paula Rego from
the large collection owned by the British Council. The exhibition consists
predominantly of British artists of the last hundred years, and includes
drawings, etchings, photographs and paintings that reflect Paula Regos
taste. Her choice reveals her own take on the world and echoes many of the
themes that appear in her works: in some, a sense of menace underlies the
narrative, in others sexual tension, absurdity or fun. Her love of drawing is
also reflected in the number and variety of graphic works by little known
artists, which rub shoulders with more iconic and famous images. The big names
include Lucian Freud (Naked girl with Egg), David Hockney (39 etchings of
Grimms Fairy Tales), Patrick Caulfield, Grayson Perry, Walter Sickert,
Graham Sutherland, Paul Nash and Richard Hamilton. One of the photographs by the
completely unknown Madame Yevonde is reproduced on the poster for the
exhibition.
My Choice is a joint
partnership between the Fundação Paula Rego/Casa das
Histórias, British Council, Fundação EDP and University of
Coimbra. After its opening at the Casa das
Hist&oacut
e;rias, the exhibition will travel to the newly-opened Galeria
Fundação EDP in Oporto in July where it will be on show until
October, from where it will then follow on to the Casa das Caldeiras at the
University of Coimbra.
Artists
Michael Andrews
Frank Auerbach
Robert Austin
Michael Ayrton
Cecil Beaton
Tony Bevan
Edmund Blampied
David Bomberg
Gerald Brockhurst
Edward
Burra
Patrick Caulfield
Jake and Dinos Chapman
Prunella
Clough
Robert Colquhoun
Charles Conder
John Copley
John
Craxton
Ken Currie
Lucian Freud
Harold Gilman
Charles
Ginner
Richard Hamilton
Colin Hayes
David Hockney
Leonard Huskinson
Augustus John
Gwen John
R. B. Kitaj
Leon
Kossoff
Percy Wyndham Lewis
Lawrence Stephan Lowry
Roy de
Maistre
Jock McFadyen
Henry Moore
Paul Nash
Sir William
Nicholson
Paul Noble
Chris Ofili
Sir William Orpen
Chris
Orr
Grayson Perry
Raymond Ray-Jones
Albert Richards
Paul
Shelving
Walter Richard Sickert
Stanley Spencer
Graham
Sutherland
Gerald Wilde
Victor Willing
Christopher Wood
Madame Yevonde
The Proles Wall Years
10 February - 19 June
2011
In 1984, Paula Rego
was invited to take part in the collective exhibition Nineteen Eighty-Four
organised by the Camden Arts Centre to mark the publication in 1948 of George
Orwells powerful utopian critique of a society in the near future. The
artist created a large painting
th
at she called Proles Wall, introducing into the narrative the term used by the
writer to refer to the proletariat and in particular the complex web of tensions
and power relations in an authoritarian and self-vigilant society, here looked
at from a personal and transforming perspective that the constraints of the
drawing impose.
Proles Wall brings
one phase of Paula Regos work to an end and begins another. It is the
culmination of the Operas series, large-scale works based on the librettos from
the early eighties, a work of unmatched breadth that fuses the sense of the
literary work on which it is based with a careful and critical examination of
contemporary society. And it initiaties new work, such as the Dentro e Fora do
Mar and Vivian Girls series, densely-peopled narratives with truncated plots in
which intense and direct colour is used as a constituent element in the drawing
and the composition.
This
exhibition, the third such temporary exhibition dedicated to Paula Rego, is
based on the establishment of a dialogue between the central work Proles Wall, a
set of 10 panels belonging to the collection of the Fundação
Calouste Gulbenkians Modern Art Centre, and pieces from the Casa das
Histórias. It is part of the exhibition programme marking the beginning
of the new year in which Paula Rego casts a curatorial eye over the work of her
fellow artists.
NEW OPENING
HOURS
The museum opens
everyday at 10.00 am and closes at 6.00 pm (winter time - until 30 April). Free
entrance.
Casa das
Histórias Paula Rego
Av. República, 300 2750-475 Cascais
tel.
+351 214 826 970
info@casadashistorias.com
www..
casadashistoriaspaularego.com
