The Unlikely Creative Alliance
In the summer of 2004, an extraordinary artistic partnership began when renowned painter Paula Rego wrote to playwright Martin McDonagh seeking permission to name her artworks after his controversial play The Pillowman. The production, which featured disturbing themes of child torture and murder, had deeply resonated with the 69-year-old artist when her daughter took her to see it at London's National Theatre.
Rego explained in her letter that the play's brutality, beauty, and humour felt familiar to her Portuguese background, where stories often contained similar cruel elements. Growing up under António de Oliveira Salazar's dictatorship in Portugal, she identified strongly with the play's themes of imagination being controlled in a totalitarian state.
From Words to Visual Masterpieces
The correspondence between the established artist and emerging playwright quickly blossomed into a creative exchange. McDonagh delved into his archives, sending Rego dozens of stories he'd written in his twenties, describing them as young and silly but containing interesting images that might inspire her.
From these, Rego selected four stories that would form the basis of what became known as the McDonagh series, created between 2005 and 2007. During this remarkably productive three-year period, Rego developed her distinctive practice of drawing and painting from carefully constructed studio scenarios with her assistant Lila Nunes.
One particularly powerful story involved a forest of babies calling out to the mother who had aborted them. This theme connected deeply with Rego's personal experiences of having multiple backstreet abortions as a Slade art student in the 1950s. Her resulting artworks depicted women in bathrooms with foetuses and bloody remnants, drawing from her own anger about the unnecessary pain and danger she had endured.
Personal Trauma and Political Impact
Rego's son Nick Willing, who now manages her extensive legacy, reveals how these works contained autobiographical elements for those who knew what to look for. The artist rarely appeared in her own paintings, but her personal history informed much of the imagery.
Another McDonagh story about a piglet praying to a scarecrow to save it from slaughter triggered childhood memories for Rego, who had been traumatised by the killing of a pig she loved. In her interpretation, the scarecrow becomes a crucified woman with a cow's skull, towering above a decapitated pig's head with a burning sky in the background.
Willing suggests this also represented his mother's guilt about losing her family inheritance after her father's death, when the family electronics business failed under her husband Victor Willing's management.
Perhaps the most mysterious work from the collaboration features a man with turtles for hands, which Willing believes relates to Rego's lifelong struggle with depression, inherited from her beloved father. He describes these elements as both curses and privileges that become part of one's identity.
Lasting Legacy and Exhibition Details
Although the planned picture book collaboration between Rego and McDonagh never materialised, the playwright describes being a tiny part of one of the greatest 20th century artists' work as mind-blowing. Willing credits McDonagh with exciting in his mother some of her most accomplished work during this particularly purple patch of creativity.
The current exhibition at Cristea Roberts Gallery showcases these extraordinary works alongside some of the original puppets and constructions Rego used in their creation, offering unprecedented insight into her creative process. Many of these bonecos (Portuguese dolls) are being displayed publicly for the first time.
Paula Rego: Drawing from Life runs at Cristea Roberts Gallery in London from 27 November to 17 January, followed by Paula Rego: Story Line at Victoria Miro from February to March, providing British art enthusiasts with a rare opportunity to explore this fascinating creative partnership.
