Gallerist Fred Jahn at the award ceremony of the Art Cologne Prize. Courtesy Art Cologne
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He
is one of Germany’s most important gallery owners and has had a strong
impact on the German and international art landscape. Recently, Fred Jahn received the Art Cologne Prize for his commitment to art. The prize, jointly presented by the Federal Association of German Galleries and Art Dealers (BVDG) and Koelnmesse, has been awarded since 1988 within the framework of Art Cologne. Other recipients have included the collector Harald Falckenberg, in 2009 and the Grässlin collector family in 2010. Fred Jahn is closely connected with the Deutsche Bank Collection.
He was a consultant for the collection and attended purchase meetings.
In an interview with the FAZ newspaper, the Munich gallery owner
recalles this period. “The nomination was a pleasant surprise. The bank
urged its consultants to buy art explicitly to support contemporary art
galleries. It was a wonderful task involving great administrative
effort. The purchase meetings took place in front of originals and
sometimes lasted two days. There were big battles of material but they
were intense times.“
Jahn advised the bank’s art department from
1989 to 1995, during one of the most important periods of building up
the collection, when the bank expanded to the former East Germany,
providing many branches there with art. In addition to many East German
artists (the first works of Neo Rauch were bought for the collection), Deutsche Bank also purchased works by many West German artists, including Georg Baselitz, Michael Buthe, Isa Genzken, Jörg Immendorff, Blinky Palermo, Gerhard Richter, and Dieter Roth.
Fred Jahn began his career in 1965 in the gallery of Raimund Thomas, before becoming first an employee and later a partner of the legendary Munich-based gallery owner Heiner Friedrich.
After establishing his own gallery in 1978, he concentrated
increasingly on drawings and works of paper, which are also the focal
points of the Deutsche Bank Collection. Art on paper is his great
passion, and so the gallery owner is in is rooms at Maximilianstraße 10
in Munich almost everyday, where he resides on the second floor. “Held
in high regard by artists, collectors, colleagues, and museum curators,
Fred Jahn is less active on the art publicity front, remaining
discreetly in the background,” read a statement giving the reasons Jahn
received the distinction. “He combines extensive knowledge and
expertise of cultural history with the business ambitions of a
first-rate art dealer.”
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