Nursery Rhymes

This portfolio of 12 etchings demonstrates a high degree of technical skill. Working directly onto the plate, the artist uses role reversals and distortions in scale to establish an extraordinary, claustrophobic world, at once humorous and sinister, like the familiar nursery rhymes she takes as her subject. Rego acknowledges a debt to the cartoonists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and to surrealism, both elements clearly present in this series. Her work may be compared to that of Goya, whose series Los Caprichos juxtaposes the same elements of comedy and horror, to dramatic effect. Drawing extensively on childhood memories, growing up in Salazar's Portugal, Rego uses images of female paragons from the nursery tales and rhymes told to her by her grandmother and mother.