Luis Quintanilla Drypoint: Untitled [A half starved campesina]

*Catalogue Entry #: Prints created before 1931 will be included, as they are discovered, at the beginning of the Madrid Series portion of the catalogue raisonné, even if they were created elsewhere, as this one probably was. (See below.) Their catalogue numbers will be designated in Roman numerals to distinguish them from the Arabic numerals used for prints created in Madrid beginning in 1931.

**Title, Date and Medium:

Very little about this print is known. It has not been observed by us, and no title (other than the descriptive one above), no dimensions, nor any other data not specified above is currently available. In fact, no prints by Quintanilla created prior to 1931, have been observed by us. This entry is based solely on the commentary by Basil Burdett in his article "The Drypoints of Luis Quintanilla, which appeared in the Print Collectors Quarterly, July, 1935.

Quintanilla's career as an engraver commenced about twelve years ago*** as a result of seeing Segonzac [André Dunoyer de Segonzac {French artist-printmaker}, 1884-1974] at work on a drypoint. Asked how it was done, Segonzac held up his point and said, "You simply draw on the metal with this"; which, with somewhat broad and general direction, Quintanilla set out to explore the medium himself and produced his first plate. It has a lean, angular feeling, this first drypoint, rather like a very tall and gaunt and, perhaps, hungry Spaniard, a half-starved campesino, a sort of skeleton of the later work, a skeleton which Quintanilla has since covered with the tonal flesh which he evolved himself, unaided, from a reluctant medium (271, 273).

***Quintanilla had left Paris during the war in 1916, but retruned in 1920, and remained there until some time in 1923, living in Montparnasse where he met many other artists. (For more, use the Biographical Chronology link in the left column menu.) If Burdett is correct in his account, and he writes as though he talked to the artist and saw the print, the logical deduction is that Quintanilla made the plate for this print in Segonzac's presence, somewhere in France, probably in Paris, C. 1923. Segonzac was an artist known by his own account to create his images directly on the plate at the scene itself, whether that be out in nature or in a Paris music hall (Bailly-Herzberg 110-111). No specific information is available as to where or when the plate was printed.