Joan Amades carrying out field work. Fons Amades/Departament de Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalunya. CP20-1047.
Joan Amades i Gelats
Barcelona, 1889 – Barcelona, 1959
A well-known, renowned self-taught folklorist, he was a leading Catalan and international ethnologist. He explored many different areas, from festival imagery to oral tradition, including dances, rituals, cordel literature, clothing, trades, etc. He even dabbled in subjects and areas of knowledge that had never been explored, such as gestures, or making Barcelona the subject of his fieldwork, something that made him a pioneer in the field of urban ethnology. At the MIAP (Museu d’Indústries i Arts Populars), Amades coincided with Violant i Simorra, and this synergy of knowledge was to be of great importance in structuring the museum, collecting materials of all kinds and documenting rituals, cataloguing festive events, etc.
Other protagonists
Ramon Violant. D4767.
Ramon Violant i Simorra
(Sarroca de Bellera, 1903 – Barcelona, 1956)
Ethnographer and museographer. Born into a humble Pyrenean family, he was the oldest of five children. He was a tailor by trade and it was his family and his self-teaching that got him interested in folklore and ethnology, independently from schools and, above all, dogmas.
Further information
Albert Folch on a totora boat. Expedition to Peru in 1963.
Albert Folch Rusiñol
(Barcelona, 1922 – Barcelona, 1988)
Was a chemist and businessman. He took a liking to ethnology while he was doing his military service in the Canary Islands, as he often travelled to Africa in order to carry out cooperation work in a drinking-water plant in the Sahara. He inherited his taste and passion for collecting from his father, Joaquim Folch i Girona, an eminent mineralogy collector.
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