Isabel Quintanilla was born in Madrid in 1938. She enters the Superior Academy of Fine Arts in 1953, and successfully completes her studies six years later. By that time she meets Antonio Lopez and Francisco Lopez Hernandez, whose friendship, since they belong to the same generation, will entail a significant artistic and personal support throughout Quintanilla's entire life.
In 1960 she obtains a scholarship as a drawing assistant at the Beatriz Galindo Institute. Soon afterwards she marries the sculptor Francisco Lopez and they move to Rome, where they live for four years. In 1982, she obtains her bachelor's degree in Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid. She then starts attending drawing classes at Trinidad de la Torre's studio and, later on, with Gutierrez Navas and Maruxia Valero.
With her husband they share the same perspective and the realist discourse about life -they both belong to the so-called "Realist Madrid School"- and their connection to the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts, a fundamental piece in the recent history of Spanish art. Isabel Quintanilla opens her first individual exhibition at Caltanissetta (Palermo, Italy), country where she returns several times to exhibit her work. Back in Spain, her paintings are exhibited at the Edurne Gallery (Madrid), La Pasarela Gallery in Seville, Egam Gallery (Madrid), Cultural Centre Conde Duque of Madrid, Rodriguez Acosta de Granada Foundation and the Leandro Navarro Gallery (Madrid). In Germany, she holds many exhibitions in Frankfurt (Meyer-Ellinger Gallery), Hamburg (Brockstedt Gallery) and Darmstadt (Darmstadt Kunsthalle).
Among the collective exhibitions she has taken part in stand out the ones held by the Leandro Navarro Gallery on the new generation of Spanish Realism, as well as by the Malborough Gallery in London and the Del Prado Museum in Madrid.
The museums and collections currently housing the work of Isabel Quintanilla are the following: The Baltimore Museum of Art, National Galerie in Berlin, Städtische Kunstsammlungen in Darmstadt, Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Museum Athenaeum in Helsinki, Bank of Spain Art Collection (Madrid), Municipal Museum Conde Duque in Madrid, Bayerische Saatsgemäldesammlung (Munich), Neues Museum (Nuremberg), Sabiñánigo Museum, Staatsgalerie (Stuttgart) and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Smithsonian Institution), Washington DC.