Eveli Torent, Between Els Quatre Gats and Freemasonry

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Image courtesy of Museo Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.

Born in Barcelona in 1876, Eveli Torent's first steps in the world of art are associated with the scene at Els 4 Gats, the crucial epicenter of Catalan modernism. In this circle the artist got to know the most veteran promoters of modernity and shared the yearnings of the emerging generation that was to follow them. This is when he met Picasso—who between 1899 and 1900 did three charcoal portraits of Torent—and also Carles Casagemas, Joaquim Mir and Hermen Anglada Camarasa. 

Like other contemporary artists, Torent traveled to Paris at the start of the new century and established himself there. He had begun working as an illustrator in the most popular Catalan magazines of the period (Luz, L’Esquella de la Torratxa or Hispania) and he continued doing this in Paris (L’Asiette au Beurre, La Vie Parisienne and Le Rire). 

An adventurer by nature, he moved to New York in 1914 and soon came into contact with Hispanic social circles and philanthropic bodies close to Freemasonry, an organization with which he would become very closely associated. Back in Barcelona, at the end of 1919 the artist began a new chapter in his personal and professional life in his studio in Plaça Medinaceli, and as a teacher of decorative art and drawing.

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