Portuguese painter Paula Rego was born in Lisbon in 1935 and later settled in London. She is considered one of Portugal’s most important artists.
As a painter, she produces large pastel polyptychs with exceptional flair. Her strongly figurative work reinvents fairy tales and myths, folklore and legends and represents characters and animals from the cruel tales of 19th-century literature, at once both realistic and imaginary, autobiographical and political.

Magnum photographer Chris Steele-Perkins photographed Rego's atelier in London.