Dame Maria Paula Figueiroa Rego, born in Lisbon, Portugal on January 26, 1935 to June 8, 2022 (aged 87), was a Portuguese British visual artist known for her paintings and prints based on storybooks.
2) Her mother was a competent artist but, as a conventional Portuguese woman from the early 20th century, gave her daughter no encouragement towards a career, even though she began drawing at age 4.
3) She went to Slade School of Fine Art to study art. Rego’s artistic career effectively began in early 1962, when she began exhibiting with The London Group, a long established artists’ organization.
4) In 1995, she used pastels to revise the story of Snow White in her drawing Swallows the Poisoned Apple. She showed what a female goes through during the life through the violation of aging.
5) Rego spent much of her career focusing on women’s rights and abortion rights. A critic of the anti-abortion movement, she used the theme of abortion as a focal point in much of her art.
6) She went on to receive man awards during her life, one recently in 2022 where she was made a Grand Collar of the Order of Camoes by the President of the Portuguese Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
