Paula Rego: Dance Among Thorns

24 April – 2 August 2026

MUNCH presents the first large-scale exhibition of Portuguese-British artist Paula Rego (1935–2022) in the Nordic region. Paula Rego: Dance Among Thorns shows the breadth of Rego’s art, from her early abstract political collages to clothed papier maché sculptures and stunning figurative panoramas, in what is the most comprehensive showing of the artist’s work since her exhibition at Tate Britain in 2021.

Director of MUNCH Tone Hansen says, “Dance Among Thornes is an exhibition that dares to go deep. It is grounded in research and committed to strong mediation, creating the space that Paula Rego’s complex and challenging body of work truly deserves.”

One section of the exhibition explores the influence of Edvard Munch (1863– 1944) on Rego, and features a recently discovered and previously unexhibited painting Drought (1953).

Like Munch, Rego’s practice presents an uncompromising exploration of the human experience with a characteristically figurative style. Unlike the Norwegian painter, however, she adopts an explicitly political and feminist view, shaped by her childhood in Portugal under the Salazar dictatorship, and later years in England as an artist.

Hansen continues: “Paula Rego clearly demonstrates how the personal is always also political. In her works, experiences of upbringing, gender, and power are woven into narratives that concern us all — making the art both deeply personal and urgently relevant to society today.

Over 140 artworks explore different phases of Rego's artistry, from early political engagement to her interest in fairytales and the subconscious. The exhibition brings together seven of the ten pastels Rego created in furious response to the Portuguese government’s stance on abortion in 1998.,This series joins a larger body of work addressing the effects external power structures have on women’s bodies, sexuality and mental health.

The discovery of Drought confirmed a thematic interest in Rego and Munch, initiating a renewed search for letters and other written material in which Rego mentioned Munch, led by curator Kari J. Brandtzæg and Nick Willing, Rego's son and director of the Estate of Paula Rego. New research reveals the 16-year-old Rego discovered Munch in 1951 at Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) in London. She subsequently wrote to her mother that, "More and more, Mum, I understand modern painters better and feel them more deeply, and I become less and less interested in the old ones, finding them increasingly devoid of feeling (I can't quite explain it)."

Rego’s sensitivity to the ambiguous territory between pleasure and pain is reminiscent of that found in Munch’s work – the central motif of his The Dance of Life (first version 1898) is an obvious reference point for Rego’s The Dance (1988). In the exhibition, the two works function as a double portal to Rego’s painful and powerful range of motifs as they developed in dialogue with other art historical references – from Renaissance painting to Surrealism, and from Francisco Goya to Käthe Kollwitz – over more than seven decades.

This previously overlooked connection to Edvard Munch’s artistry is further highlighted by the inclusion of three works on paper by Munch – Inheritance (1897), The Dance of Life (1899–1900), and History (1911–16) – which nod to shared themes and resonances between the two artists’ oeuvres.

Senior curator Kari J. Brandtzæg says, “One of Paula Rego’s most important motifs The Dance (1988) has a clear resemblance to Munch’s The Dance of Life (1899). The exhibition's title is inspired by this. For Rego, life offered "thorny" struggles from growing up under a fascist and Catholic regime – which limited women’s life opportunities–to gaining the recognition and possibilities she deserved as a female artist”.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication featuring new texts by Kari J. Brandtzæg, Isabel Freire, Catarina Alfaro and Jennifer Higgie.

In her personal essay ‘Dance Among Thorns’ Kari J. Brandtzæg explores the central themes of the exhibition, among them the hitherto overlooked connection to Edvard Munch’s artistry. Brandtzæg, the exhibition’s curator, has also written ‘The Faces of War’, which concerns Rego’s artistic treatment of Portugal’s history from World War II and her childhood memories of the war years. In addition, Brandtzæg has written ‘An Oratorio for Rejected Children’, about Rego’s shift towards grotesque themes using pastel and clothed papier maché sculptures during the later phase of her career, when she was already recognised as one of the most significant artists of our time.

In the text ‘Fairy Tales Should Be Respected’, Jennifer Higgie sheds light on Rego’s relationship with the British art scene, which Rego had been a part of since her teenage years, while Catarina Alfaro’s ‘Theatres of Memory’ explores the traces of childhood Portugal in the adult painter’s work. Rego’s experiences in Britain and Portugal are also woven into Isabel Freire’s ‘From the Waist Down’, which explores the artist’s long-standing commitment to women’s issues, particularly a woman’s right to abortion which was heavily restricted in Portugal until 2007.