Exhibition at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum from 27 February to 2 June 2024. Isabel Quintanilla had not until now received the recognition she deserves as one of the great figures of Spanish painting in the second half of the twentieth century. Since the 1970s, her work has been frequently exhibited in various cities in Germany and acquired by museums and collectors in that country, which has prevented it from becoming better known in Spain. Half of this exhibition, which is reflected in this catalogue, is that recovered production. The curator and author, Leticia de Cos, has constructed an artistic and at the same time vital itinerary through Quintanilla's pictorial genres and themes. Her still-lifes combine classical forms with very contemporary objects, such as the Duralex glass, the telephone or the sewing machine (with which the artist's mother brought up the family) that evoke a time and a country. Quintanilla is a painter of lived reality and a large part of her work deals with the spaces she inhabited: the bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom, the sewing corner and the artist's studio. Although almost always empty of figures, these interiors are filled with the presence of the people in her life, her husband and her son. Everything breathes intimacy: the windows that receive the light from outside and the doors that lead us further inside. An interlude along the way is dedicated to Isabel Quintanilla's companions and friends; the three painters who formed part of the group of realists in Madrid: Esperanza Parada, Amalia Avia and María Moreno. Then we move on to the landscape and the city, to the rural horizon and urban views. And the tour concludes with those in-between spaces, the courtyards and gardens, which are so constant and so characteristic of the Madrid painter. One of the most valuable contributions of the curator's essay in the catalogue is Quintanilla's inscription in the history of European painting. From the frescoes of Pompeii to the courtyards of Pieter de Hooch and the interiors of Samuel van Hoogstraten, the mysterious rooms of Vilhelm Hammershøi and the landscapes of Aureliano de Beruete.