Paula Rego

Marlborough Gallery, New York
Marlborough Fine Art, London, where acquired by the present owner

New York, Marlborough Chelsea, Paula Rego, Human Cargo, 17th April - 17th May 2008, unnumbered catalogue.

Unexamined out of frame. Sound sheet. The sheet appears adhered in at least the four corners, but not fully laid down. The sheet is undulating slightly. There are pinholes apparent to or around all four corners with one or two further visible to the extreme edges of the work. There is slight scuffing to the top right and left corners, with a very minor area of creasing to the top left corner, visible upon closer inspection. Further studio media marks appear in places to the sheet, as in keeping with the artist's technique. This excepting the work appears to be in very good, original condition. Housed behind Perspex in a thick stained-wood frame, float-mounted against a white background. Unexamined out of frame. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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Of the series of large-scale drawings Rego created from the beginning of 2007, none serves to capture her adept skill of draughtsmanship more so than the present work.  Impressive in terms of both size and stature, it forms an important departure from her earlier working methods, yet retains her characteristic attraction towards Mediterranean and in particular Hispanic narrative visual culture.  Stripped of her recognisably seductive colours, the present work pares back to reveal a new, stark subjectivity that whilst at first appears menacing, brings with it a sense of the inherent enjoyment the artist takes in her practise.

Ever the playmaker, Rego draws inspiration from Zurbarán’s 17th Century Spanish masterpiece St Luke the Painter before Christ on the Cross (1660, Collection Museo Nacional del Prado), spinning the scene, rich in its sense of Spanish theatricality, to depict, as Marco Livingstone writes, a Christ replaced with ‘no intentional blasphemy, by a bony elderly woman with sagging breasts and a diaper-like loin cloth; forlorn and humiliated, she is gazed at pityingly but also with a dry-eyed curiosity, by a clothed and healthy younger woman who stands in both for St Luke the Painter and for Rego herself’ (First Principles: Introduction to Paula Rego, Human Cargo, 17^th April – 17^th May 2008, Marlborough Gallery, New York).