Waiting at the Shore - 9781845195977

Chronicling the extraordinary life of the Spanish artist Luis Quintanilla, who was championed by Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Elliot Paul, and many other American and European writers and artists,Waiting at the Shore is an enthralling biography that features Quintanilla’s illustrations throughout. In 1912, a young Quintanilla ran off to Montmartre where, under the influence of his fellow countryman Juan Gris, he began his artistic career as a Cubist. Returning to Madrid before the war, he befriended prominent Spaniards, including Juan Negrín, the premier during the Spanish Civil War. In April 1931 he and Negrín participated in the peaceful revolution that ousted the monarchy and installed the Second Spanish Republic, and when civil war broke out, Quintanilla helped lead troops on Madrid’s Montaña Barracks, which saved the capital for the Republic. The artist completed 140 drawings of the various fronts of the war, which were exhibited at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, with a catalog by Hemingway. After the Republic lost the war, Quintanilla was forced into an exile that lasted several decades. Living in New York and Paris, he strove to perfect his art, shunning the modernist vogues of the time. Although a celebrity when he first arrived in the United States, he eventually fell into obscurity. This volume brings him out of the shadows of neglect and provides the compelling story of an artist who not just led an extraordinary life but left a legacy of paintings and drawings which, in both their skill and great imaginative variety, should be known to all art lovers.