Isabel Quintanilla

ISABEL QUINTANILLA (Madrid, 1938 - Brunete, 2017)
Untitled, 1952.
Oil on boards (x3).
We thank Doña Leticia de Cos, curator at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, for her help in cataloguing the works.
Signed and dated on the lower right.
Provenance: Personal collection of the artist. Private collection, Madrid.
Measurements: 11 x 11 cm (x3); 15 x 15 cm (frames, x3).
We thank Doña Leticia de Cos, curator at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, for her help in cataloguing the works.
Set of three small oil paintings on panel, made by Isabel Quintanilla in her adolescence. The pieces reveal a formative moment in the artist, when she was still searching for her plastic voice and was influenced by trends such as post-impressionism. Far from the meticulous serenity and precision that would characterize her mature work, these early pieces possess a raw and spontaneous energy, marked by the freshness of youth and experimentation.
The brushstrokes are quick, loose and material, revealing the texture of the accumulated oil in certain areas of the support, as if the paint were as important as the motif. The colors are intense and earthy, applied with freedom and boldness. These works, although far from the lyrical realism that would define Quintanilla, are valuable testimonies of her initial creative process, where one can already sense her sensitivity for light, matter and the intimacy of everyday motifs, still filtered by the free and vibrant spirit of post-impressionism.

Isabel Quintanilla was a Spanish visual artist who belonged to the movement of the new Spanish realism. Her paintings usually depict still lifes, depicting simple objects and views of everyday life, as well as landscape paintings. In 1953, at the age of fifteen, she entered the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes. He graduated six years later, in 1959. In 1960, Quintanilla received a scholarship and became an illustration intern at the Beatriz Galindo Institute. Soon after, she married sculptor Francisco López. In 1982 she received a degree in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid. She then began drawing classes in a workshop organized by Trinidad de la Torre; later she took classes with Gutiérrez Navas and Maruxia Valero.