On 20 July 2018 Jahn und Jahn open an impressive exhibition, boasting works by luminaries including Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and Georg Baselitz alongside those by younger artists from the gallery programme, such as Matthias Dornfeld, Hedwig Eberle and Ioan Grosu. Coupled with a summer party, the show celebrates a particularly significant anniversary: in 1978, 40 years ago, Fred Jahn established his gallery at 10 Maximilianstraße, ten years ago his son Matthias opened his own gallery at 56 Baaderstraße and, finally, only a year has passed since the newly-merged Galerie Jahn und Jahn relocated here with two adjacent exhibition spaces.

Fred Jahn has written gallery history with his decade-long involvement in the art scene: a constant of the gallery landscape in Munich with an international reputation. In 1968 he became a freelancer for Galerie Heiner Friedrich and from 1971 was a partner there. The programme at that time focussed on Richter, Polke and Palermo as well as on the Americans. In 1972/73, Jahn was managing director and partner of Edition der Galerie Heiner Friedrich in Munich.

Until the end of the nineties, within the context of his own gallery, he made a name for himself with a series of publishing projects. He was, for instance, the publisher and author of important graphic catalogues on the work of contemporary artists. Two further interests which were pursued throughout the eighties and nineties were African sculpture (supported by Jens Jahn) and Japanese ceramics (supported by Gisela Jahn). Moreover, from around 1980 the gallery programme put particular emphasis on Hermann Nitsch and Arnulf Rainer, and the collaboration with Gerhard Richter and Georg Baselitz steadily developed. There was an increased focus on works on paper which resulted in important presentations of artists of classical modernism including Willi Baumeister, Henri Michaux, Otto Meyer-Amden, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Richard Oelze and Francis Picabia. In addition, numerous thematically structured shows added diversity to the exhibition programme. Alongside the great names of contemporary art, Fred Jahn also devoted himself to less internationally prominent artists - many from around Munich and south Germany, to whom he has remained loyal for years. Karl Bohrmann, Heinz Butz, Oskar Coester, Erwin Pfrang, Friedrich G. Scheuer, Rudi Tröger and Katharina von Werz are just a few examples.

From 2008, following his education at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, Matthias Jahn began his activities as a gallerist at 56 Baaderstraße. Here he prioritised the work of younger generation artists who, in some cases, would show publicly for the first time. The recently merged Galerie Jahn und Jahn, which opened one year ago, ushers in a new phase in the history of the gallery. With Tim Geissler, Matthias Jahn has found a like-minded advocate for the field of contemporary art. Space-related projects of a highly experimental nature explore new exhibition formats and create dialogues with older positions from the gallery programme. The room layout, which is considerably larger than the intimate exhibition space at Maximilianstraße, is ideal for the presentation of monumental formats as well as small-scale works and drawings. Jahn und Jahn’s successful presence at relevant art fairs is an emphatic reflection of these broadened expectations for the gallery.