07 July - 05 February 2011
Opening hour: 18h30

At the invitation of the Foundling Museum, an institution that preserves the memory of the abandoned children given shelter at the Foundling Hospital, Paula Rego produced a group of works between 2008 and 2010 that were exhibited for the first time at that museum from February to April 2010. This exhibition set up a dialogue between three contemporary artists, Paula Rego, Mat Collishaw and Tracey Emin, offering their reflections on the rites of passage of these children through this institution. The first presentation of this exhibition in Portugal, at the Casa das Histórias, recovers and completes that recent group of works produced by the Portuguese artist.

Paula Rego seized upon this idea in order to construct a three-dimensional object, a piece of furniture almost three metres high and an exact replica of these Portuguese oratories, with the same pair of shutters and an identical shape and volume. In it, she developed, for the first time, an unexpected and intentional relationship between the drawings to be found on the walls of the cupboard and the sculptures set against this narrative background.

This remarkable evolution of the artist, who transforms the most recent models of her work into genuine sculptures, also reconnects to the physical dimension of the playful objects of the 1970s (nymphs, princesses or the puss in boots…) and it serves her absolute need to progress towards new solutions and pursue other experimental paths.

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