Under the title Eveli Torent. Between Els Quatre Gats and Freemasonrythe Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC) celebrates, from this Friday until February 16, 2025, what will surely be the first world retrospective on Eveli Torent (Badalona, 1876–Barcelona, 1940), a character who He was in all the artistic “saraos” of the early 20th century in Barcelona and Paris but, due to a wandering and cosmopolitan life, as well as the civil war, he was relegated to oblivion.
“Until relatively few years ago he was known above all for the portraits that his friends had made of him, especially Picasso,” comments Lluïsa Sala, curator of the exhibition and one of the few world experts on this enigmatic figure. Some of Picasso’s portraits can be seen in the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, although others belong to private collections.
In the exhibition, in fact, you can see some of the portraits that the genius from Malaga made of Torent, as well as others made by Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa and Ricardo Baroja. “Torent was a very active member of the Els 4Gats group, along with Isidre Nonell, Picasso, Ramon Pichot, Manolo Hugué, Joaquin Mir and Carles Casagemas, of whom he was a distant relative and who dedicated some works to him,” explains Salas.
The group, which met in the historic café in the Gothic quarter of Barcelona called Els Quatre Gats, represented the renewal of modernism against the Rusiñol, Casas, Utrillo and company. “Torent was one of the first to exhibit at Els Quatre Gats,” notes the head of collections at the MNAC, Eduard Vallés. “We also know that only arriving in Paris exhibited in Berthe Weill’s gallery, which tells us that he was a well-known artist at the time,” he adds.
The Torent enigma
But despite appearing in numerous portraits and chronicles, neither the figure of Torent nor his work were widely known in artistic and museum circles. Pepe Serra Villalba, director of the MNAC, acknowledges that “until just three years ago, when we began to investigate his figure from the museum, I was unaware of his existence.” “For this reason,” says Serra, “it was necessary to hold this exhibition that would highlight one of the protagonists of Catalan art of the last century.”
Lluïsa Sala explains that a long research effort has been necessary “to connect the dots and bring together some of his works, the vast majority belonging to private collections around the world.” In this way, the expert has been able to reconstruct the vital periods of Torent, who was a highly mobile person, since after moving to Paris in 1903 and staying until 1913, he later traveled to Argentina, from where he moved to New York in 1914 to remain in America until 1921, after the first great war.
He has lived all these years from painting and illustration in a professional way, accepting commissions for both portraits of prominent personalities and advertising posters. In the exhibition you can see those he made for a Barcelona tailor shop J. Peralta, for the anise brand Perla or for the French tonic Byrrh. “All of them have a modernist setting very much in line with other poster artists of the time,” Sala reveals.
From Paris to New York
But from the Parisian stage, the expert highlights Torent’s good relationship with the French satirist writer Laurent Tailhade and his wife, the writer Marie-Louise Laurent-Tailhade. “One could venture that their friendship, which was lasting, became very intimate,” says Sala. “The trio made numerous trips through France and as a result of one of them to Brittany, Torent made a series of paintings and illustrations of great stylistic novelty,” he adds.
Together with Tailhade he edits a chronicle of the trip titled L’Assiette au Beurrein which one puts the tax and the other the illustrations. However, Torent continues to accept commissions for Spanish magazines such as L’esquella de la Torratxa and some of his works can be seen in the exhibition.
In 1913 he left France to seek new professional horizons. Before, around 1910, he had traveled to Argentina, where he made a remarkable and powerful portrait of the famous Sardana composer Enric Morera. Finally, he settled in New York, a city where he would remain until 1921, when he moved again, this time back to Barcelona.
Little is known about his years in America, although it is deduced from his epistolary relationships that he gave his art a professional approach and worked hard. In this regard, Sala points out that “he was very smart and hard-working, a hustler who never had financial problems, also because his family was well-off.”
Return to Barcelona and discovery of Ibiza
After his return to Barcelona, now 45 years old, he dedicated himself to teaching and settled in the city. But on a summer vacation he discovers the island of Ibiza, with which he falls in love. Together with his wife, Consuelo Hernán, he buys a defensive tower on the island, the Torre d’en Rovira, and prepares it to spend the summers.
“He turns it into a kind of museum where he exhibits everything from farm tools to weapons and organizes receptions for other vacationers in the summer,” reveals Sala, who adds that he receives visitors dressed as a caliph with his wife, in what could be a germ of the performances of the 60s.
They called themselves “the Great Caliph and the Caliph of the Caliphate of es Pallaret”, according to the journalist of the newspaper Ara Toni Ribas Tur, who has investigated this stage of Torent’s life and writes an interesting article in the exhibition catalogue. The comment, however, is not his but that of Josep Palau i Fabre, the poet, biographer and also a great friend of Picasso in recent years, who in 1936 attended one of those performative receptions and photographed it, leaving a priceless graphic testimony. from that Torent stage.
Freemasonry, war, prison and death
“Torent says in a letter to his nephew from New York that it is in this city where he became a Freemason, however we believe that he was already one from his time in Paris,” points out Lluïsa Sala. The fact is that Torent’s career within Freemasonry is solid and goes far, up to the 33rd degree, the maximum, which gives him influence both internationally and in the State. “During the republic, the majority of ministers were Freemasons and he knew them and corresponded with them.”
This influence that was so favorable to him before the civil war turned against him after the war. The fascist coup surprises him in Ibiza from where he moves to Barcelona. There he is arrested by the Republican side, accused of sympathizing with the uprising, although Torent refutes the accusations and is finally released.
He spent the war years in Barcelona, but after the fall of the city, in 1939 he was arrested and prosecuted as a Freemason. He renounced Freemasonry in May 1940, but the harsh conditions of the Modelo prison took their toll on him and after being released, he died in October at the age of 64.
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