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  Paula Rego

  Born in Lisbon, Portugal, Rego's talent was early recognised by an English teacher at the Anglican school in Estoril, and in 1952, aged 17,
  she went to the Slade School in London. In 1959, Rego married the English artist Vic Willing, who later contracted multiple sclerosis. From   1959-75 the couple divided their time between London and Portugal, and Rego gradually began to build a reputation with her collages. In   1965, a controversial solo exhibition in Portugal brought her fame in her native land.

  From 1966 until the early 1980s, however, Rego's life passed through a dark period as her husband's health deteriorated. In 1976 they   returned to England, and in 1983 she became a visiting lecturer at the Slade. Turning from collages, Rego now began to develop the bizarre   figurative and anecdotal work that has since made her famous, such as the so-called Red Monkey pictures, notably Wife cuts offRed   Monkey's Tail.

  In 1986, Rego's Girl and Dog series broke new ground. In these, her unsentimental but neatly dressed children, painted in a flat, almost   crude style, disruptively enact adult fantasies and anxieties. In 1989, her Nursery Rhymes suite of etchings was published, touring   internationally. These grotesque but strangely moving images impressed with their emotional depth. Rego was chosen as National Gallery   Artist in Residence in 1990.

  In December 1996, she showed at the Marlborough Gallery, New York, and had a retrospective at the Tate Gallery, Liverpool, in March 1997.   An exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery in 1998 for the first time featured predominantly male subjects. In June 2000, Rego was one of the   artists chosen for the Encounter exhibition at the National Gallery. Full of allegory and mystery, her powerful images are often pervaded by a   tense underlying eroticism. Like Angela Carter's revamped fairy stories, such as The Company of Wolves, Rego questions our notions of   childhood innocence. Many women see themselves and their predicaments in Rego's art.