7 November 2013 to 20 April 2014

Opening at 6pm.

Curators: Paula Rego, Catarina Alfaro

The exhibition Paula Rego/Honoré Daumier: Scandals, Gossip and Other Stories establishes a dialogue between two artists for whom graphic work became a means of expression that was as direct as drawing itself. That dialogue was possible the through the collaboration of the collector Juan Espino Navia, who made available his collection of lithographs by Honoré Daumier (1808-1879) - most of which were published in the French satirical newspaper Le Charivari - so they could be seen and chosen by the artist Paula Rego and be part of an exhibition.

In their own ways the two artists used and dominated engraving techniques in order to bring their views, histories and political perspectives to a wider public than that associated to painting and sculpture, and explored this more democratic art form in order to produce multiple images that, when put into circulation, can operate a change in mentalities. In the case of Daumier it was particularly the lithographic process that allowed him not only a means of subsistence and a stable income, but also a manner of propagating his defence of the common man, of the outcast and expropriated people. For Paula Rego it was engraving and lithography that granted her a complement to painting and allowed her to reach a vast audience with her unique feminist narratives.

Paula Rego's graphic work (which also includes her etchings and serigraphic production) is made up to the point of almost three quarters by thematic series. If in painting she develops narratives that are not completed within a single work, the use of the techniques of engraving and lithography allow her to multiply the stories, intensifying the whole of its narrative sense through foldings and imagery intersections. In Daumier's lithographs, present in this exhibition, also integrated within the most varied thematic series yet in the specific circuit of the French satirical press of the XIX century, there is a caricature of the daily episodes of French social life, particularly in relation to the petit-bourgeoisie and the middle classes. What Paula Rego finds most enchanting in these caricature compositions "is the elasticity of Daumier's line and how there is often something wrong yet expressive in the composition of the bodies".

What unites them is the unequivocal fact that both Daumier and Paula Rego have used graphic artistic production as an element that dilutes the hierarchies and the difference between erudite and popular art, always communicating with the present time through their critical voices, which are often extremely critical, and often with social intervention.