Collection

Draftswoman, painter, assemblage artist, and teacher. Quiñones, whose father was Puerto Rican, came to the island when she was fourteen, settling with her family in Peñuelas. She studied sociology at the University of Puerto Rico’s Río Piedras Campus, and in the early eighties began drawing. Quiñones taught drawing and painting at Casa Candina, the Puerto Rico School of Plastic Arts, and the Art Students League of San Juan, and was active in the Association of Woman Artists of Puerto Rico, which she chaired from 1994 to 1996. In seeing a book as a visual object and calligraphy as a visual element, she always insisted on the close relationship between literature and the visual arts. She illustrated several books of prose and poetry, and received awards such as the first prize in painting in the Ateneo Puertorriqueño’s visual arts competition in 1996. In 1999, the town of Peñuelas named an exhibition hall in her honor. Quiñones’ work was Abstract Expressionist; her canvases are painted with extraordinary texture and harmonious colors. Interestingly, Quiñones made use of a wide variety of materials to prepare the surfaces for her drawings—the buren used for etchings, for example.