August 24, 2005

The Jail Drawings of Luis Quintanilla - Quintanilla was a Spanish artist who started out as a Cubist then moved into other genres to become a noted draftsman and muralist. Drawn into political activism during the Spanish Civil War, Quintanilla was arrested for being a member of the Revolutionary Committee which intended to oust the Spanish government. He was slammed in jail where he made a series of evocative and extraordinary drawings. Here are some of them.
posted by Chyren 18 years ago
  • OH COME ON. This was good. Philistines.
  • Indeed! ))
  • )))!!! The watercolours and pastels are worth looking at, too! Especially the fine brown pelicans and the ostritches!,
  • I have to slap learnin' into these dayum monkeys!!
  • the world still turns and wonders what the Monkey learns, if...only...but...
  • Here y'are, bees, I need to ask you something.. wtf is a "hoople head"?
  • Wonderful drawings indeed! They evoke an intersting mood. I was not familar with his work, so many thanks for posting. I personally like "Catching Rats." "An Ongoing Need" is somewhat telling...
  • the entire site (lqart.org) is worth a browse. thanks!
  • Here. First I've heard of it, mate -- thanks.
  • that's a quality link. thanks, Chyren.
  • Thank you bees, I have spent a day or two looking up the word directly because of my addiction to Deadwood, with no luck, and thought that someone closer to the source would have the skinny, but obviously my confusion was well founded due to it being largely an invention by Milch. I guess I should have realised that due to the liberties he takes with language in the series, but other details in the show are so historically accurate I thought it might be something specific. Sorry to put you to the task, I thought it was something commonly known I'd missed. :) thx also patita etc, yeah, this guy is one of the unsung talents. The capturing of characters is remarkable, although stylised to a certain degree, you can really 'see' the people he's painting.
  • This is good. Really good. Thanks Chy. But I don't know if I would say that he "started" as a cubist. He might have first gained fame as a cubist and then moved on, but cubism was a revolutionary art form. I can't imagine a student in art school who started to draw fully formed cubist material as soon as he got his sketchbook. Pedantic, I know. But what the hell else am I gonna do with my time?
  • Very nice post. Except your last link is the same as your first. So you fail. Go sit in the corner.
  • John Dos Passos' contribution to the exhibition catalog is wonderful. Thanks, Chy.
  • Koko loco
  • si, un poco loco es koko.
  • hmm, there's someone he reminds me of. I'm blanking on the name... have to look at my art history texts at home. Somehow I'm thinking this artist was a contemporary... another artist who came through cubism into something else. I'll keep poking for a link. it's not de Chirico. grr.
  • Chirico es un poco loco, e roccoco.
  • ...the liberties he takes with language... Knew a chap once who invariably said Rothwalter for Rottweiler, and Wyhymer when he meant Weimeraner -- and he was dead serious, not facetious. He also did strange and startling things to other words, it was just how he was. Certain members of my own family managed, in teasing the younger of us, to so memorably distort a few words that it was years before we got pteroglyphs and petrodactyls and pterosauruses rex straightened out.
  • and ptomaine ptoisoning and p-monia?
  • )