27 April 2005

TASCHEN celebrates 25th Anniversary

This is their story, in their own words: From a young age, Benedikt Taschen had been interested in art, but found that art books were too expensive and hard to obtain.

In 1980, when only 18 years old, he opened a shop in his native Cologne, Germany, to market his massive collection of comics. But it wasn't until 1984 that his first art-book breakthrough occurred when he purchased 40,000 remainder copies of a Magritte book printed in English, and resold them for a fraction of their original price.

In 2000, TASCHEN surprised the world by breaking the record for the most expensive book published in the 20th century: copy #1 of Helmut Newton's SUMO, signed by over 80 celebrities featured in it, fetched over $300,000 at a charity auction.

25 years have passed since Benedikt Taschen opened his little comics shop. Today, TASCHEN has grown into one of the most successful and unique publishers in the global market, publishing an eclectic variety of books for people of all tastes, distributed worldwide in over twenty languages.

You can download a PDF version of TASCHEN’s history here. It’s quite colourful.

1 comment:

PrufrockTwo said...

Nice post. Keep up the good work.