Paula Rego | Drawing from Life
Exhibition | 27 November 2025 – 17 January 2026 | Cristea Roberts Gallery | 43 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5JG
Paula Rego, Seduction of Prince Pig, 2006
This Autumn 2025, Cristea Roberts Gallery will present a major exhibition featuring a body of work by Paula Rego (1935 -2022) centred around an intensely personal period of three years that the artist spent in her studio, focusing on her drawing practice, as she explored darker and more complex themes than ever before.
A major catalyst for the work she made during this period was the connection she found in the work of playwright and film maker Martin McDonagh (b. 1970), through his play The Pillowman and a series of unpublished short stories which McDonagh personally shared with Rego. The playwright’s stories became a channel for Rego to feed her own personal history, bringing to bear her childhood memories and an inner world filled with contradictions,
conflict and personal crises. Over thirty works, made from 2005 to 2007, will be exhibited, including several which will be shown for the first time. Rego’s studio will be partly recreated in the exhibition, showcasing the dolls and creatures she made and used as models for many of the works. The exhibition will be accompanied by a new book, featuring a selection of short stories by McDonagh.
The recreated studio will be brought to life by the figures and creatures in these works and others, such as a crucified scarecrow, a pig’s head, a foetus in a yellow sink, a skeleton with a flower in her hair, and a rabbit drawing. Paula Rego: Drawing from Life is the final time Rego’s studio will be relocated and displayed.
This exhibition is a collaboration between The Estate of Paula Rego and Cristea Roberts Gallery. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, who recently acquired a complete set of Rego’s Untitled abortion etchings, will stage a major exhibition of the artist’s paintings and prints in 2028,the first of its kind in the US.
About Paula Rego
About Paula Rego Paula Rego (1935 - 2022) was born in Lisbon, Portugal. After attending finishing school in Kent, England, she studied at the Slade School of Art in London between 1952-56. Rego came to prominence in Britain after her first major solo exhibition at the Air Gallery, London, in 1981 and subsequently at the Serpentine Gallery, London in 1988, which was followed by her becoming the first National Gallery artist in residence in 1990.
Rego explored themes of power, rebellion, sexuality and gender, grief and poverty, often through female protagonists. One of the most important figurative artists of her generation, her work ranges from painting, pastel, and prints to sculptural installations. Rego represented Britain and Portugal at the São Paulo Biennale and received honorary doctorates from Oxford and Cambridge Universities and from the Rhode Island School of Design in the US.
The largest and most comprehensive retrospective of Rego’s work to date was held at Tate Britain in 2021 and travelled to Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Netherlands and Museo Picasso Málaga, Spain, in 2022. Further solo exhibitions of Rego’s work have taken place at Kun- stmuseum Basel; Casa das Histórias Paula Rego, Cascais, Portugal Hayward Gallery Touring UK exhibition (2024); The National Gallery, London (2023); Pera Museum, Istanbul; Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover; Arnolfini, Bristol (2022); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, which toured from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh and MK Gallery, Milton Keynes (2019-2020).
About Cristea Roberts Gallery
Cristea Roberts Gallery is a leading international contemporary art gallery with a particular focus on original prints and works on paper. Since its inception, the gallery has commissioned a significant number editions by a wide range of artists, whilst also representing others for their unique works. The underlying ethos of the gallery has always been artist-led. It was originally founded in 1995 as the Alan Cristea Gallery and changed its name in September 2019 to Cristea Roberts Gallery.
Acknowledged as one of the leading galleries in its field of specialty, the gallery’s programme is dedicated to publishing, cataloguing, exhibiting and dealing in original prints and drawings by its roster of over 30 important international artists and Estates. It participates in all the major international art fairs and has a dynamic programme of exhibitions hosted in its bespoke space in Pall Mall, London. The gallery works closely with international museums on acqui- sitions and loans, and examples of its editions are held in major public collections around the world including Tate, London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Visitor information
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Closed 21 December 2025 - 4 January 2026
Free admission
Travel: Piccadilly or Green Park underground station
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