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The Art and World of Luis Quintanilla. This retrospective web gallery features selections from the life’s work of the Spanish artist, Luis Quintanilla. (1893-1978) As organized and arranged by the artist's son, Paul Quintanilla. |
Chronology of Quintanilla's Life and Work
The Murals | Portraits | Drawings and Engravings
Still Lifes | Landscapes and Interiors
Illustrations for Books and Plays | Water Colors
Shows | LQ's Memoirs & Biography | Selected Bibliography
Quintanilla Photographs | A Little About Quintanilla
A Brief Aesthetic Survey of Quintanilla's Development
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The Murals |
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Portraits |
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Drawings and Engravings The Etchings of Madrid Life and Street Scenes New York Drawings and Engravings
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Still Lifes |
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Landscapes and Interiors |
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| Quintanilla Photographs |
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| A Little About Quintanilla (1893-1978) Starting out as a Cubist under the influence of his friend, Juan Gris, Quintanilla eventually became a prominent Spanish draftsman and muralist. Though he would have far preferred to be left alone to paint in peace without engaging in politics he was eventually drawn into the tumultuous affairs of his times. In 1931 he and Juan Negrin, the Premier of the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War, put the flag of the Republic up on the Royal Palace in Madrid ensuring that the revolution which ousted the king would remain bloodless. In October of 1934 Quintanilla started a prison term lasting eight months, four days, and three hours for hosting, in his studio, the revolutionary committee of the October revolt. As has happened on other occasions when a prominent artist has found himself in jail, the world's intellectual community rallied to his aid. Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos circulated the petitions and organized the protests in the United States, Andre Malraux in France, and Lady Margo Asquith, wife of the former Prime Minister, performed the same service in Britain. And a show of his Madrid street scene etchings took place at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York with a catalog by Hemingway and Dos Passos. This show introduced him to the United States. When the Spanish Civil War started in July, 1936, Quintanilla helped lead the attack on the Montana Barracks which saved Madrid for the government. He was made the commander of the barracks at the start of the war and led men in action on the streets of Madrid, Toledo, and in the Guadarrama Mountains. In the spring of 1937 he was removed from these and other duties by Juan Negrin and commissioned to do a set of drawings of the war. These were shown first in 1938 at the Barcelona Ritz and then in the Museum of Modern Art in New York with a catalog by Hemingway. With the fall of the Spanish Republic in 1939 he was forced into an exile which lasted more than 37 years, living first in New York and then in Paris. A year following the death of Spain's dictator, General Francisco Franco, Quintanilla returned to Madrid where he spent the remaining two years of his life. He died at the age of 85. Paul Quintanilla
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A Very Brief Aesthetic Survey of Quintanilla's Development
Start Here -
His style always adapted to his theme. Though
he made the drawings of jail soon after the Madrid street scenes
note how different they are. And how they capture an entirely different spirit and mood.
And once again his style adapted to his theme.
Further examples of how his approach and style adapted can be
seen in all his other drawings and illustrations. On the Main Menu there are many links.
6 - Love Peace Hate War and Don Quixote Murals
7 - These links (New York and Paris) will take you to the Main Menu.
Most of my reproductions are of work from the forties and fifties, what is
in my own collection. He may have reached his prime in Paris
during the sixties. Unfortunately, I have very few reproductions of
his work from that time. Nor do I know where most of it is today.
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"The transcendence of a genuine artist can be understood by any person who merely looks at the extraordinary results of converting a wall, a tablet, a canvas, or a flat board into something with lines and colors which the whole of humanity can admire and look at over many centuries, art being the one eternal value which helps us endure the stormy upheavals of history." Luis Quintanilla Translated from Pasatiempo: la vida de un pintor
In a century which greatly prized individuality, even eccentricity, for its own sake, Quintanilla paid a very high price for going his own artistic way. He was modern without truly becoming a Modernist, and he never signed that most modern of artistic credos which declared aesthetics null and void. As he tells us in an open letter he wrote to Ernest Hemingway for his 1939 Associated American Artists' Gallery show, "I believe only in good painting. Abstract or concrete, with ismo or without ismo, come from where it might and go where it will.” This letter could well serve as his own artistic credo and an introduction to his work.
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This homemade, cardboard sign was attached to a corner of the wooden bin my father constructed and used in his New York studio to store his oil paintings. The quote from Rabelais is, of course, bogus. The sign was merely intended to keep visitors from freely picking through the paintings, which irritated my father. Be assured, though, that this "Stay Away" sign doesn't apply to visitors to this site. There is, I believe, a wealth of art work here, all of it neglected and much has never been displayed before. Paul Quintanilla |
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About this Site
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This
web gallery features reproductions from my own collection of Quintanillas.
These include: the etchings of
More
on this Site or scroll up |
Main Menu or scroll up |