Businessman, traveller and reporter
A visit shows what lies behind Casa Amatller's stepped façade: the photographic studio of a pioneer.
Casas Singulars has programmed, on 17 December and 7 January, two new visits to the photographic studio of Antoni Amatller i Costa (Barcelona, 1851 – 1910) in the modernist house that bears his surname.
Heir to an artisan chocolate workshop initially located in the Born, Antoni Amatller moved the factory to Sant Martí de Provençals and modernised its production, following European models and controlling the quality of the cocoa plantations in Cuba. He also introduced posters and stickers as an advertising technique and commissioned artists incuding Ramon Casas, Apel-les Mestres and Alphonse Mucha to design them.
In addition to his business affairs, Antoni Amatller was a great fan of collecting and photography. Founder, together with Pau Audouard, of the Asociación Fotográfica Española and a leading member of the Association Belge de Photographie in Brussels, he excelled as a portrait and genre photographer, as well as reporting on the trips he made to Morocco, Egypt, Paris and Turkey on the Orient Express.
In 1898, he commissioned the architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch to transform a block of flats on Passeig de Gràcia, which is now the headquarters of the Amatller Institute of Hispanic Art, created by his daughter Teresa Amatller i Cros.
The visits on 17 December and 7 January will focus precisely on his facet as a traveller and photographer. As well as the building's main floor, visitors will also enter the fourth floor, just behind the stepped façade, to see his photographic studio and some of his original objects (camera, stereoscopic viewfinders, plates and images). In this same space, participants will take part in a Photo Transfer workshop based on a photograph from 1900.
The promotional price for this experience is 17 euros. You can make your reservation by clicking this link.