Premiere: Cologne Fine Art -Works on Paper

There was previously no comparable event in Germany to the Paris
Salon du Dessin, the London Drawing Week and the Print Fair New York
for works on paper, although the country does have excellent private
and public collections. As an area experiencing a resurgence in galleries,
collectors, museums and exhibitions, the Rhineland seemed to us
exactly the right place for such an event. Instead of the charisma of a
large metropolis, this location offers all the advantages of a unique art
trading centre with a long-standing tradition. In the Cologne Fine Art &
Antiques fair, we have an exhibition space that comes complete with
synergies that promise success.

The collecting of drawings
by Siegfried Gohr

The first collectors of drawings were the artists themselves. They kept
drafts or compositional studies as templates for use in their workshop.
Some drawings will have aided discussions with customers or served
as templates for graphic reproduction. Ever since the Renaissance, the
artistic value of drawing had been highly prized. This was nowhere
more decisively demonstrated than in Leonardo da Vinci’s “A Treatise
on Painting” – his key to understanding the world. Even during the
great Renaissance master’s lifetime, but particularly from the 17th
century onwards, the first major drawing collections were beginning to
be established. Kaisers, kings, religious dignitaries, scholars and even
rich merchants collected thousands of drawings. A European trade in
important portfolios soon blossomed. These were sometimes transferred
into public ownership and formed the basis for major exhibitions
that were established mainly in France and England to begin with.
One particularly important character in this respect during the 17th
century was a Cologne native called Eberhard Jabach, an entrepreneur
who later fell into financial difficulties. In 1671 he sold his collection
of several thousand drawings to the king of France, which led to the
establishment of the “cabinet des dessins”, today part of the Louvre.

With all the historical changes the world has seen, collecting drawings
still has a certain allure. As in the Renaissance, collectors are
particularly fascinated by the idea that with a drawing, they are bearing
witness to the creative inspiration of an artist. Since the Modernist
era, many of these works have been accorded equal status and exhibited
alongside finished works, because the artist’s intention was to
make the spontaneity, the speed and the immediacy of the message
visible. Or they depicted the formulation of an idea, either constructive
or conceptual, which served as the basis for an installation or
a performance. As before, a master’s drawings continued to evoke
fascination because they showed the culmination of artistic thinking
and artistic ability. No museum worth its salt can afford not to maintain
and expand its collection of drawings and furnish it with inspiring
highlights. This requires a certain level of expertise in acquisition and
installation, something every private collector may also have. But the
spontaneity, a by-product of drawing, can easily become the thread
that pulls a collection together, creating something very personal
from various sources. Those who collect drawings inevitably become
discoverers. And sooner or later, they will see an image of themselves
reflected in their own collection.