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Agustina’s biographies of Paula Rego and Florbela Espanca explored the idea that “affinity” is not
a conditio sine qua non for a biography, also claimed, for instance, by Paula R. Bakcscheider 16 when
she affirmed that “It is familiar folklore that biographers have an ‘affinity’ for their subjects may have
long ‘identified’ to some extent with them, and ‘like’ them”.
The sort of complicity between the writer and the painter becomes very strong in the project they
tried to accomplish together: Agustina started developing the feeling that Paula Rego belonged to
her family. She evoked in her mind someone who was absent for a long time, and is returning to
restore the past:
She was like a family member who had forgotten to send news during a journey of
adventures which became a titanic work. When I use a pen to write about Paula Rego, it is
as an old meeting. Since childhood. 17
“Writing about Paula Rego” suggests the recalling of key episodes and places in the painter’s life:
elementary school, the years in Ericeira, the departure to England, where she married and studied,
and the artistic accomplishment.
We can relate this selection of memories about Paula Rego to those concerning Agustina’s
autobiography. Both display some traits that bring together the writer and the painter: a critical
perspective about what surrounds them, and a permanent feeling of solitude.
About the project As Meninas, Agustina makes clear that what fascinated her was again a
biographical feature: “Girls of all ages show up in Paula Regos’s work. They have the faces of the
maids who walked through the house of Ericeira, and rough hands capable of murdering someone.
Paula’s painting is a writing that one learns in solitude.” 18
One of the most thought‐provoking ideas that can be found in Agustina’s work is that it seems to
correspond to an “aesthetic of the unfinished.” This point is emphasized in this biography and
becomes another major affinity between the writer and the painter: her paintings, says Agustina,
show that women play a key role. Paula Rego’s girls are “extremely dangerous”, “always wide awake,
and knowledgeable of prohibited things and conspiring.” 19
From Agustina’s standpoint,
Paula’s work is autobiographical, but it is above all frightening. She is frightening. (…)
The life of this woman is made of surprises. She’s alone, without brother or sister, and she
feels comfortable with solitude. (…) While other children play (…), Paula is closed in the
room. 20
In conclusion, the biography of Paula Rego signifies to Agustina the return to one of the happiest
moments of her own life – childhood. It was for the painter as to the writer the time for dreams and
plans. Adulthood also seems to mean the same for both: it’s the moment of their artistic fulfillment.
Therefore, to Agustina biography cannot be reduced to a mere account that gathers data of the
life and the work of an artist (a writer or a painter, as we can see in Florbela and Paula Rego).
Biography has to be understood as an effort to bring together historical facts and subjective
impressions, and, above all, to get together artists.
Agustina’s fascination with life‐writing allows an interesting picture of the place of women in a
traditional society. Both autobiography and biographies show these issues: in her family, Agustina
questions the implications of women’s weakness in a patriarchal society; in Florbela’s and Paula
Rego’s biographies, she brings to the fore the struggle against insignificant roles ascribed to women.