“The drawing is a pronunciation”: Paula Rego and Agustina Bessa-Luís

Abstract

The aim of this text is to analise The Girls, book in which portuguese novelist Agustina Bessa-Luís concerns the compatriot painter Paula Rego's life and work. In spite of its biographic contours, with special focus on Rego's childhood and her relationship with Victor Willing, the text brings various reflexions about the nature of the artistic job itself. It is believed that, by reading the novel, it is possible to consider it not only as a critic appreciation report of Rego's artistic fortune, but also as a book which value indwells in itself. By introducing the painter's biography, Bessa-Luis finds connections with her own experience, and use them as starting points to weave a great number of metalinguistic reflexions, as well as thoughts about the relation between text and canvas. Considering that, it is intended to demonstrate how the book accuses an interartistical dialog, also demonstrating connecting points between Bessa-Luis writing and the images that permeates the novel.