Isabel Quintanilla

Exhibition at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza from February 27 to June 2, 2024. Up until now Isabel Quintanilla had not received the recognition she deserved as a prominent name on the Spanish art scene of the second half of the 1900s. Beginning in the 1970s, her works were frequently shown in various German cities and acquired by museums  and collectors in that country, a fact that prevented her from being better known in Spain. Indeed, half of the pieces on view here, and reproduced in this catalog, have been brought from Germany. Leticia de  Cos has charted the course of QuintanillaÆs career and life through the genres and subjects she explored. The artistÆs still lifes combine  classical arrangements with contemporary objects, such as a Duralex glass, a telephone or a sewing machine (her motherÆs means of providing for her family), which recall a particular period of SpainÆs  past. Quintanilla painted experienced reality and much of her oeuvre depicts the spaces she lived in: the bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom, the sewing corner and the artistÆs studio. Although these interiors are nearly