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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 |
About this Site
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This
web gallery features reproductions from my own collection of Quintanillas.
These include: the etchings of
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Why this Site?
My father's good friend, Luis Araquistain, once suggested that what he, my father, needed to make his name known was a good book of reproductions. Araquistain, who could have done it, died before such a book could be made. In that spirit, I have created this webpage, a web museum for my father's work.
Once he was an acclaimed artist, championed by many renowned authors and fellow artists. Today it may be hard to believe that Ernest Hemingway once remarked, as his brother, Leicester, told me, that Luis Quintanilla "can paint the ass off of anybody." Though my father's work "may have the virtue of not being a photogenic art," as another friend, Angel Sanchez Rivero, put it, with this web museum I hope to at least acquaint you to the enormous variety, imaginative force, good humor, humanity, and beauty of his work. My father never signed that most Modernist of contracts declaring aesthetics null and void. Instead he worked intensely, every day, developing his own artistic personality and vision: "working with the mad fury of all true artists, driven as they ever were by some primal urge," as his friend Herbert Matthews, of The New York Times, wrote in the catalog for his Wildenstein show.
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For
decades now I have had an enormous quantity of his paintings, drawings,
water colors, pastels and engravings in storage here at home, nearly
all of it unseen, unknown, and unremarked upon. But the miracle of modern
electronics, so foreign to my father's world, has made it possible for
me to make his work easily available to the entire world.
| How to Navigate this Site
I have created two basic approaches for exploring this site. One chronological, the other topical.
The chronological approach will permit you to explore his work as it developed and changed over the years. The page on which the chronology is on also includes a brief aesthetic survey of his development as an artist.
Lithograph: 20 1/2 x 23 3/4" |
The
Main Menu, the topical approach, will allow you to
visit his work by medium and genre. The menu bar at the top and bottom of each page will return you to the Homepage and the Main Menu.
The best way of seeing my father's work is in a soft, natural light: the kind of light he created most of it in. Barring that opportunity, you may want to remove all the clutter from your screen's desktop, to remove the visual distractions which often accompany a web page. This site was created on a Mac OS X employing Dreamweaver 6.0, with a 15" digital screen. The size of most of the type on my 15" screen is the same as a normal typewriter's. And you may want to be on guard against bloated images, which on Windows seem to be common. I hope your system is compatible. |
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How to Reach Me I would be interested in hearing from you.
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Other Web Sites These are links for other sites on the Web: American Printmakers On-line Catalogue Raisonne Project: The Prints of Luis Quintanilla |
Copyright 2003
All rights reserved.
You may print out any text which appears on this site
for noncommercial use.