In the 1930s, Luis Quintanilla was considered one of Spain's greatest living artists (Pablo Picasso held the premier spot). During the Spanish Civil War, Quintanilla's Loyalist activities brought him jail time, then exile when his party lost the war. In 1940, in cooperation with the Committee for Displaced Scholars and Artists of the Rockefeller Foundation, the University of Kansas City (now UMKC) invited Quintanilla to be its first artist-in-residence. During his seven-month visit, he painted a series of remarkable frescoes using the same technique with which Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel. The colorful murals contrast Don Quixote, Sancho Panza -- and a weird, sexy carnival of others also represented by UKC faculty, staff and students -- in their ideal and real worlds. Though the works refer to the Spanish Civil War and possibly presage Hitler's hell-bent movement toward another war, their meaning is as relevant today as it was then, for politics merely changes underwear from one era to the next.
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