Published to accompany Paula Rego: Dance Among Thorns, presented at the MUNCH Museum in Oslo, this richly illustrated exhibition catalog offers one of the most comprehensive explorations of Paula Rego’s extraordinary artistic career.
Bringing together all works featured in the exhibition, the catalog traces Rego’s fearless engagement with themes of gender, power, oppression, identity, and women’s autonomy. Raised in Portugal under António de Oliveira Salazar’s dictatorship, Rego developed a distinctive visual language that combined political conviction with mythology, fairy tales, and psychological narrative, creating some of the most compelling figurative paintings of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
The exhibition also examines Rego’s artistic dialogue with Edvard Munch, revealing visual and thematic connections between the two artists for the first time. Essays by curator Kari J. Brandtzæg, together with contributions by Jennifer Higgie, Catarina Alfaro, and Isabel Freire, place Rego’s work within broader discussions of political art, feminism, and contemporary social history.
Featuring 150 color illustrations across 256 pages, this beautifully produced volume presents a nuanced portrait of an artist whose uncompromising vision challenged artistic conventions and political oppression throughout her career. An essential reference for collectors, scholars, and admirers of Paula Rego, contemporary figurative art, feminist art, Portuguese art, and modern European painting.
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