Paula Rego’s works sold at auction for a record price

Paula Rego’s panel “Dancing Ostriches from the Walt Disney Film” was sold this Friday at auction in London for 3.5 million euros, setting a new record for a work by the Portuguese artist, auctioneer Christie’s confirmed.

The final price was £3.065 million (€3.54 million at current exchange rates), exceeding the agreed base of £2.2 million (€2.5 million).

The auction took place this Friday at a night auction of works of the 20/21st century, where 52 lots were presented with works by artists such as Lucian Freud, Peter Doig, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, Gerhard Richter. , Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, George Condo, Marlene Dumas and Lucio Fontana.

The artist’s two-panel work with the original title “Dancing Ostriches from Walt Disney’s Fantasia” from 1995 is being offered at auction for the first time. Inspired by the film by American director Walt Disney, the Dancing Ostriches series was previously part of Saatchi’s collection created for the Hayward Gallery exhibition Enchanted: Art and Film in 1996 and has been shown frequently over the past three years. decades.

He has exhibited, among others, at Tate Liverpool (1997), UK, Reina Sofia National Museum (2007-08), Madrid, Spain, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, France (2018) . -19) and at the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hannover, Germany (2022–23).

In the book by the writer Agustina Bessa-Luis “Like Meninas” (2001, Três Sinais Editores), with illustrations by Paula Rego, the writer believes that “the drawing becomes authoritative in Paula’s work.” [Rego]feels grateful for being able to paint so well and applies his gift to the canvas, which will reach its apogee in Dancing Ostriches.

“They are monstrously beautiful. True beauty is monstrous. It breaks down, stands in the open, jumps over all obstacles, has superhuman elasticity. And suddenly beauty appears, boundless, pure and monstrous,” described Agustina Bessa-Luis (1922). -2019).

Born in Lisbon, Paula Rego began painting as a child, and at 17 she moved to the British capital to study at the Slade School of Fine Art, where she settled and distinguished herself for the uniqueness of her work. inspired by literature and marked by decades of advocacy for women’s rights.

In London she met her husband, the English artist Victor Willing, who died in 1988, whose work Paula Rego showed several times at the Casa das Histórias museum.

In 2004, the President of the Republic, Jorge Sampaio, elevated her to the Grand Cross of the Military Order of Sant’Iago da Espada de Portugal, and in 2010, she was awarded the title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. British Crown for Contribution to the Arts.

In 2016 he received the Medal of Honor of the City of Lisbon. In 2019, the artist was awarded the medal “For Services to Culture” by the Ministry of Culture.

Paula Rego died on June 8, 2022 in London, leaving a body of work that is represented in several important public and private collections around the world.