Rego’s work that involves the female figure is fabulously in-your-face about concepts of feminine beauty. She takes on the notion of what is beautiful in her series of “Dancing Ostriches,” in pastel on paper mounted on aluminum in a square format, which mocks the very notion of lithe anorexic ballerinas. Her dancers wear black tutus that reveal large breasts and muscles, and light pink toe shoes, their large bodies stretched across black leather sofas. Their muscles are articulated by the light that emphasizes the physical structure of the model, Lila Nunes, who was originally the caretaker for Rego’s husband, Victor Welling, and stayed on as her model and surrogate self. It may seem strange that she chose Nunes as a surrogate for herself as they are opposite physical types, but perhaps Nunes exemplifies the strength of Portuguese women for Rego. Rego says,“She can play many roles and does in my work.”

In 1998, there was a referendum to decriminalize abortion in Portugal, which failed by less than two percent. In response to this vote, Rego made a series of pastels of women undergoing illegal abortions. These young women sit on couches, their legs spread with buckets nearby to hold the medical waste. This harsh depiction of the backroom abortion has such power that when a new referendum came up to legalize abortion in Portugal in 2007, these pictures were credited with its passing. I know of no other artist who has taken a strong political stand in their work and succeeded in changing public opinion since Picasso’s Guernica, the anti-war painting whose exhibition in Europe helped raise money for refugees from the Spanish Civil War.