Emili VILA y GORGOLL, born in Llagostera, Spain October 18, 1887, and died December 28, 1967, was a poster artist and painter who worked for Gaumont, Paramount and Fox, becoming one of the most prominent illustrators of the 1920s in France. He met dozens of prominent artists from early 20th century Paris such as TOULOUSE-LAUTREC and PICASSO. He spent the last years in his hometown, where he was a landscaper on the Costa Brava and turned his house into a museum. In 1902, he left his hometown with his family and went to Barcelona fleeing from the usury of the local chief, who made life impossible for his father, an industrialist who made cork stoppers. Student of Rafael MASO and Joan Baixas CARRETER, at the age of 18 he was awarded at the General Exhibition of Fine Arts in Barcelona. His father found work in a company in Champagne region, and the family moved to France, where in 1909 he got a job as an illustrator at the Echo du Nord-est newspaper, where in 1914 he would make a series of pictures about the life of the soldiers of the World War I. In France he became a prominent illustrator and painter. During his time in Paris, where he settled in 1906, he became friends with PICASSO. From 1910 he was a draftsman at the Val d'Osne foundry and a signmaker at Pathé studios, at which time he lived in Montmartre, next to MODIGLIANI's house. In a short time he started working at Gaumont, Paramount and Fox, who offered him to settle in New York, although he declined. The prosperity in the French capital allowed him to rent a palace with a private elevator and twelve balconies on the boulevard Voltaire, where he received PETAIN, FOCH, POINCARE, CAMBO and MADARIAGA, as well as aristocrats, potentates and some of the main film stars of the moment, from Hedy LAMARR to Joan CRAWFORD, Jean GABIN, Lili DAMITA, Anita STEWART or FERNANDEL. He returned more and more often to Catalonia, where he rented an apartment on Passeig de Gracia in Barcelona and the Mas Miomi estate in Sant Feliu de Guíxols. In 1941 he returned permanently to Llagostera, painted landscapes of the Costa Brava and held some exhibitions. He would end up turning his house into the Vilà Museum. He received the French knighthood of the Legion of Honor, established by Napoleon I in 1802, and the award of the French artist's cross.