Etching Acid

Bombs and artillery blasted his Madrid studio to rubble. His prodigious monument to the leader of Spanish Socialism, Pablo Iglesias (an eleven-panel mural containing 140 life-size figures), was destroyed. But the Fascists could never touch Luis Quintanilla the artist.* His drypoints, safely scattered in museums all over the world, continued to speak with the social force--if not the human weight --of Goya's best.

QuintanilLa turned soldier, conned books of military tactics by flashlight at night, and led Loyalist troops in the daytime. He earned the devotion of the doomed Republic by directing the attack on Madrid's Montana Barracks (which saved the city for a while). Between battles QuintanilLa the artist spread a hip-pocket sketchbook on his knee, crammed it with needle-sharp summations of democracy's clash with Fascism.

Since 1938, Quintanilla (now 50) has lived quietly with his handsome U.S. wife and son Paul, 6, in a Greenwich Village apartment. But bombs still go off in his head, and he has not stopped fighting Franco. His latest attack: a book of pen & ink souvenirs of Franco's Black Spain (Reynal & Hitchcock; $3.50). As calm and bitter as a cup of etching acid, the drawings are sure to cut deep into democratic consciences.

* Not to be confused with Diplomat Luis Quintanilla, former Mexican Ambassador to Moscow, no kin.

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