![]() Balancing on the seal's head is a bird-like figure. To the right of him a human-type body topped by a profiled head emerges from an animal base derived from a reproduction of a seal. On the left of the painting is a bare-footed man with a badger's head. The Firemen of Alijo was made using collaged fragments onto which Rego had previously drawn in charcoal and pastel and painted with gouache and inks. Initially these were taken from magazines, but when she could not find what she wanted she drew and painted the image on paper and then cut it out. Shortly afterwards Rego began a new body of work, completing a painting each day and often incorporating collaged elements. The accompanying release of energy generated by this process resulted in bright colours communicating a vivid, raw energy. The discovery of Dubuffet's work helped Rego to reconnect with the intuitive spirit of her childhood, giving her the confidence to allow her imagination free reign in large, childlike scribbles. In 1960 during a brief visit to London for the birth of her second child Victoria, Rego saw an exhibition of work by the French painter and father of ' Art Brut', Jean Dubuffet (1901-85), and was immediately inspired. Rego and Willing lived in Portugal between 19. ![]() People as characters are far more real to me.' (Quoted in McEwen p.76.) She uses her personal narrative and experiences to describe feelings around moral, social and political issues. Rego has said: 'I can only understand ideas in terms of human relationships - I don't understand political abstractions. No figure in the painting is a representation of any particular fireman, but rather an expression of her feelings around that time. Rego has described the painting as a homage to their role in Portuguese society as unpaid volunteers. They had bare feet and wore traditional Portuguese coats padded with straw. She saw the firemen outside a tavern huddled together because of the cold. Leaving her mother in her room doing her hair, she wandered around the town and was struck by the poverty of its inhabitants. Rego's father was terminally ill with cancer (he died six months later), her husband was in a bad mood the whole time and Rego said she felt 'a sense of the end of the world' (in unpublished conversation with Judith Collins, 2000). The winter was the coldest on record it snowed and the hotel Rego was staying in with her husband, the artist Victor Willing (1928-88), and her parents had no heating. The title of Rego's painting is derived from a group of firemen she saw in Alijo, a small town in northern Portugal, while on holiday there over Christmas and new year 1965-6. The figures are a mixture of human and animal forms combined with convoluted intestinal imagery and abstracted machine-like shapes reminiscent of the forms Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) painted in his Brides and Nudes series of paintings in 1912. This is a large painting depicting a group of surreal, brightly-coloured figures against a rich red and orange background.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |