"Luis Hoosegowed"

Luis Quintanilla, 39, muralist, etcher, humanist and Spanish Republican, held his first one-man show in the U. S. last week. Pierre Matisse was his sponsor, Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos his patrons and apologists. On the sober walls of the Matisse Gallery 39 of Quintanilla's etchings were lined up, all handsomely mounted and glassed. Critics, collectors, and ladies in long mink coats all hurried up to see them. But Luis Quintanilla was not excited. In Madrid behind the bars of the Central Prison he was fighting for his life.

Three years ago Luis Quintanilla was a great man in Madrid. A burning revolutionist all his life, he plotted ardently for the overthrow of Alfonso XIII and with his own hands ran up the first Republican flag over the Royal Palace. Socialist Indalecio Prieto was Minister of Finance then and commissioned Luis Quintanilla to paint huge frescoes on the walls of the Casa del Pueblo and the great new University City out at Moncloa Park. Free-spending Prieto lost his job and Spain swung farther to the Right. Fearing a Fascist dictatorship, perhaps even a restoration of the Bourbon Monarchy, Luis Quintanilla became a conspirator again.

In the bloody unsuccessful October revolution he played no active part but allowed his Madrid penthouse apartment to be used as a hideout by four Socialists while he prudently absented himself for four days. When he returned to his apartment street fighting was still going on. Police raided the house and found Luis Quintanilla and four revolvers. In Spain if a man has three revolvers, shotguns or rifles in his home he may conceivably be a sportsman or a collector. If he has four he is plotting against the government.

Luis Quintanilla had the advantage of having extremely vocal friends who were not willing to let the world forget that a very talented young man was in danger of lying in a Spanish jail until he is 58.

Hulking Ernest Hemingway was in Key West dividing his attention between literature and marlin when a two-word cable arrived from Madrid. Inscrutable to a Spanish censor, it read LUIS HOOSEGOWED.

Mary Hoover, who had worked with Luis Quintanilla on some of his Madrid frescoes, brought a heavy package of etched zinc plates to the U. S. Author Hemingway paid for pulling a small edition of proofs, and Pierre Matisse was glad to give them a Manhattan showing. John Dos Passos wrote a short, able introduction to the catalog. Ernest Hemingway, still hot under his size 16 collar, pounded out a 1,500-word essay that described his friend's plight, his art, and formed a collector's item. Excerpt:

"Now this may possibly be a good time to suggest that a small tax be levied on the use of the word revolution, the proceeds to be given to the defence of, say, such people as Luis Quintanilla, by all those who write the word and never have shot nor been shot at; who never have stored arms nor filled a bomb, nor have discovered arms nor had a bomb burst among them; who never have gone hungry in a general strike, nor have manned streetcars when the tracks are dynamited; who never have sought cover in a street trying to get their heads behind a gutter; who never have seen a woman shot in the head, in the breast or in the buttocks; who never have seen an old man with the top of his head off; who never have walked with their hands up; who have never shot a horse or seen hooves smash a head; who never have sat a horse and been shot at or stoned; who never have been cracked on the head with a club nor have thrown a brick; who never have seen a scab's forearms broken with a crowbar, or an agitator filled up with compressed air with an air hose; who, now it gets more serious--that is, the penalty is more severe--have never moved a load of arms at night in a big city; nor standing, seeing it moved, knowing what it was and afraid to denounce it because they did not want to die later. . "

Luis Quintanilla is a radical who keeps his politics out of his art. With excellent line and considerable humor he shows the daily routine of the Spanish people to whom he has devoted his life. Among his best plates : a naked toothsome young wife kissing her lover through the bars of a window while her fat husband snoozes with his back turned; two bewildered young Basques showing their humble bundles, their passports at a frontier railroad station; a fat Madrid dandy getting a shoe shine at a cafe; a chunky street acrobat holding a whale of a woman high in the air with one hand.

In jail Luis Quintanilla is well fed, is allowed pencils and paper, is at present working on the portrait of his warden. The warden is proud as a peacock.

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