The Munich gallery owner Fred Jahn will receive this year’s ART COLOGNE Prize. The award, which includes €10,000 in prize money, is jointly presented by the Federal Association of German Galleries and Art Dealers (BVDG) and Koelnmesse. The award will be presented in Cologne’s historic city hall at 11 a.m. on Friday, 19th April 2013.    
   
   
Jahn began his career in 1965 at the gallery of Raimund Thomas. In the late 1960s, he started working for the legendary Munich gallery owner Heiner Friedrich. At Friedrich’s gallery, where he became a partner, Jahn was primarily responsible for managing the editions programme.   
   
After he established his own gallery in 1978, Jahn’s activities began to focus on drawings and works on paper. In his work, Jahn is very closely connected with artists such as Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz and Hermann Nitsch, many of whose printed graphic works he has published.   
   
Publications accompanied many of the exhibitions that Jahn organized in his gallery or at various institutions. For example, his publishing company has created many catalogues devoted to artists ranging from Isa Genzken and Arnulf Rainer to Bob Wilson, to name just a few.    
   
In addition to his international activities, Jahn has organized exhibition projects to promote regional artists who are less well known. Examples include Rudi Tröger, for whom Jahn published a catalogue of works, as well as Blinky Palermo and the American minimalist Fred Sandback, whose name became known in Germany thanks to Jahn.    
   
Jahn has had a big impact on the German and international art scene — not only through his work as a consultant for large private and corporate collections, but also through his collaborations with museums and active management of several artists’ estates.   
   
Fred Jahn is greatly esteemed by artists, collectors, colleagues and museum curators. He combines extensive knowledge and expertise of cultural history with the business ambitions of a first-rate art dealer. In addition to being interested in creative arts, Jahn has devoted himself to Japanese ceramics and African sculptures. Not only has he traded in such objects; he has also published extremely high-quality scholarly works about these forms of art.    
   
Since 1988, the ART COLOGNE Prize has been awarded in recognition of successful attempts to communicate modern and contemporary creative arts in a sustainable and exemplary manner. The prize has been presented to outstanding individuals from the museum sector (Katharina Schmidt, Nicholas Serota, Suzanne Pagé) and the art market (René Block, Erhard Klein, Michael Werner), as well as to art collectors (Ingvild Goetz, Frieder Burda, Harald Falckenberg).   
   
This year’s award-winner, Fred Jahn, will exhibit with his gallery at ART COLOGNE.   
   
The award ceremony will take place in Cologne’s historic city hall at 11 a.m. on Friday, 19th April 2013. The laudatory speech will be held by Professor Siegfried Gohr, Prorector of the Düsseldorf Art Academy.   
   
   
   
Please note: New dates   
   
47. ART COLOGNE 2013   
Public days: 19 to 22 April 2013    
   
AXA ART Private Preview and Vernissage    
Thursday, 18 April 2013   
   
   
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