Spanish painter Isabel Quintanilla entitled one of her works "Tribute to my Mother" (1971). If we attempt to envision the painting's content based on its title, we might conjure images of a woman – the artist's mother – posing for a portrait or engaged in a specific activity. However, Quintanilla had a distinct approach: the tribute to her mother doesn't involve the physical presence of her mother. Instead, it centers around an object her mother utilized – a sewing machine, symbolic of her profession.
Quintanilla's mother worked indeed as a dressmaker, supporting her two daughters after Quintanilla's father, who fought with the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, died in 1941 in a concentration camp in Burgos. Despite the absence of a human figure in the painting, one can envisage the woman inhabiting those spaces, and the long hours she spent at the sewing machine. In this way the painter's homage through the machine is more potent and convincing than a traditional portrait.
This painting will be showcased in a retrospective opening later this month at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, in Madrid (27th February to 2nd June 2024). Curated by Leticia de Cos Martín, "Isabel Quintanilla's Intimate Realism" marks the first time the museum dedicates a retrospective to a Spanish female artist, a key figure in contemporary realism.
The exhibition comprises 90 pieces spanning Quintanilla's entire career, encompassing her most significant paintings and drawings, along with works by other fellow artists. Many of these pieces have never been displayed in Spain, but they are loaned from collections in Germany, where the artist enjoyed widespread success and recognition during the 1970s and 1980s.
Born in 1938 in Madrid, Quintanilla started her artistic journey by attending art classes in private studios as a young girl. At the age of fifteen, she enrolled at the San Fernando Higher School of Fine Arts in Madrid, where she encountered fellow students Antonio López, Julio and Francisco López, and María Moreno. Though Quintanilla was familiar with the avant-gardes, she soon opted for realism in her art.
Quintanilla started teaching and exhibiting her work towards the end of the 1950s. In 1960, she married Francisco López, and the couple relocated to Rome after he received a scholarship to study in Italy. Quintanilla held her first solo exhibition in Caltanissetta before returning to Spain, where she resumed teaching and continued her artistic pursuits. She participated in numerous exhibitions in both Spain and Germany, particularly during the 1970s and 1980s, with Germany serving as the primary market for her artwork.
Although Quintanilla's works were featured in the 2016 group exhibition "Madrid Realists" at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, this new retrospective, spanning six decades, is the first dedicated to her artistic universe and it also includes personal objects that frequently became the subjects of her paintings.
The exhibition opens with ten early works that foreshadow Isabel Quintanilla's distinctive style. "The Table Lamp" (1956) showcases elements that would become recurrent in her body of work: a collection of diminutive, everyday items presented frontally and in close-up against a neutral backdrop. Another early work, "Still Life in front of the Window" (1969), from her final year at the Higher School of Fine Arts, explores a theme commonly embraced by realist painters – the portrayal of objects positioned on a windowsill.
Quintanilla also explored the spaces right outside her window, painting the courtyards of her houses and studios, definitely more modest than the Impressionists' gardens, but including flowers and fruit trees that she herself had planted. As such, they became an important inspirational and working space for the artist.
During Quintanilla's time in Rome, her pencil self-portrait and city views adopted a structural approach maintained throughout her landscapes, characterized by a raised viewpoint and a horizon line halfway up the composition. Upon returning to Madrid, her artistic evolution saw a departure from dark colors and flat lighting. Instead, her paintings became infused with vibrant colours and light.
The incorporation of everyday household items and personal possessions in her still lifes gives an autobiographical twist to the works: while Quintanilla includes fruits, vegetables and meats in her works, fashion accessories also make an appearance, from gloves and sandals to a purse, nail varnish and Duralex glasses (popular in Spain the 1960s, they frequently appear in her paintings). Quintanilla's still lifes also incorporate medicines, kitchen cleaning products, foodstuffs, and well-known domestic appliance brands of the time. Quintanilla's palettes and the objects featured in her still lifes may actually be inspiring for fashion designers or fashion design students: it is not difficult to imagine garments and accessories with prints of some of her more vibrant paintings, but this emphasis on specific objects may also be explored in more conceptual ways.
Also the figure of Quintanilla's mother could be turned into an intriguing inspiration: her mother's influence and dressmaking memories subtly permeate certain works through objects like sewing machines, scissors, and thimbles, as evident in "Still Life with Newspaper" (2005) or in the previously mentioned painting, "Tribute to my Mother" (1971).
One section of the exhibition will prove of interest with interior designers since it is dedicated to Quintanilla's depictions of domestic interiors – empty, uninhabited spaces like her house, studio, bedroom and bathroom. Viewers will be able to admire a room from various angles as the painter often dedicated to the same room different viewpoints, moving her easel and concentrating on a different space within that room (see "Interior. Paco writing", 1995, and "Interior at Night", 2003).
Diverse lighting conditions also allowed Quintanilla to transform the same motif into distinct paintings, exemplified by "Dusk in the Studio" (1975), and in "Nocturne" (1988-89), painted fifteen years later. At times a different time of the day was presented, while in other cases the artist created a contrast between natural and artificial light, a good example is "Night" (1995).
The exhibition's fifth room is dedicated to landscapes and urban views, showcasing Quintanilla's connection to Castile, Extremadura, Madrid's mountain ranges, and the sea. This section also includes various views of Madrid, San Sebastián and Rome.
The exhibition concludes with a selection of works from her friends and colleagues Esperanza Parada, María Moreno, and Amalia Avia, with Francisco López's sculpture "Figure of Isabel" (1978) and an audiovisual installation featuring previously unpublished material recorded with Isabel Quintanilla while she was working in her studio in the 1990s.
Women played a prominent role among Madrid's realists, a group in which women outnumbered men and had an equal importance with them. Yet Quintanilla, and her fellow artists as well, still faced challenges in gaining recognition even though their paintings reflected absolute mastery of technique, fine-tuned skills, and a continuous artistic evolution.
As usual there is a lesson for fashion designers (and fashion students) here as well: interested in everyday motifs, Quintanilla painted her own surroundings and her own objects.
Whether a still life, a domestic interior or a courtyard, the subjects of these works are her personal possessions, the rooms in her houses, and the trees and plants in her courtyard, encouraging a fresh perspective on the aesthetics of daily life and elevating the ordinary to artistic expression. Her work emphasizes therefore the importance of discovering beauty and inspiration in everyday gestures and in the seemingly mundane aspects of life.
Image credits for this post
Isabel Quintanilla
Tribute to my Mother, 1971
Oil on panel
74 × 100 cm
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
© Isabel Quintanilla, VEGAP, Madrid, 2023
Photo: ©bpk / Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen
Isabel Quintanilla
The Table Lamp, 1956
Oil on canvas
32,5 × 40,5 cm
Private collection
© Isabel Quintanilla, VEGAP, Madrid, 2023. Photo: © Jonás Bel
Isabel Quintanilla
Glass of Pansies on Top of the Fridge, 1971-1972
Oil on panel
41 × 33 cm
Private collection. Courtesy Galería Leandro Navarro, Madrid
© Isabel Quintanilla, VEGAP, Madrid, 2023. Photo: © Jonás Bel
Isabel Quintanilla
Window with Rain, 1970
Oil on canvas
52,5 × 65 cm.
Private collection
© Isabel Quintanilla, VEGAP, Madrid, 2023
Isabel Quintanilla
The Blue Table, 1993
Oil on canvas
83 × 75 cm
Private collection
© Isabel Quintanilla, VEGAP, Madrid, 2023. Photo: © Jonás Bel
Isabel Quintanilla
Watermelon, 1995
Oil on canvas affixed to panel
70 × 100 cm.
Private collection. Courtesy Galería Leandro Navarro, Madrid
© Isabel Quintanilla, VEGAP, Madrid, 2023. Photo: © Jonás Bel
Isabel Quintanilla
The Telephone, 1996
Oil on panel
110 × 100 cm
Private collection, Madrid
© Isabel Quintanilla, VEGAP, Madrid, 2023
Isabel Quintanilla
Nocturne, 1988-1989
Oil on canvas
100 × 90 cm
Kunststiftung Christa und Nikolaus Schües
© Isabel Quintanilla, VEGAP, Madrid, 2023
Isabel Quintanilla
The Hovel, 1967
Oil on panel
64 × 45 cm
Private collection
© Isabel Quintanilla, VEGAP, Madrid, 2023. Photo: © Jonás Bel
Isabel Quintanilla
The Door, 1974
Oil on canvas
56 × 40 cm
Private collection
© Isabel Quintanilla, VEGAP, Madrid, 2023. Photo: © Axel Schneider
Isabel Quintanilla
Rome, 1998-1999
Oil on canvas affixed to panel
135 × 220 cm
Galerie Brockstedt, Berlin
© Isabel Quintanilla, VEGAP, Madrid, 2023
Isabel Quintanilla
Self-Portrait, 1962
Pencil on paper
53 × 38 cm
Private collection
© Isabel Quintanilla, VEGAP, Madrid, 2023. Photo: © Jonás Bel
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