Jahn und Jahn / Lisboa

A Munich Institution Finds a Home in Estrela

I came here for António Júlio Duarte’s work in Notas de Rodapé, but what struck me first was the space itself. Jahn und Jahn’s Lisbon gallery sits in a 19th-century townhouse on Rua de São Bernardo, right next to Jardim da Estrela and the British Embassy. The building still carries traces of its former life — a forest green door with wrought iron details, plaster mouldings on the ceilings, worn wooden floorboards that creak underfoot. It’s bright, modern in how it’s been adapted, but never stripped of its character.

There’s a small patio out back that makes the whole place feel alive, especially during openings. I can easily picture it on a warm Lisbon evening — people spilling out from the rooms, drinks in hand, art on the walls and conversation in the air. It’s the kind of space that turns an exhibition opening into an actual event, not just a formality.

The History Behind the Name

The “und” in Jahn und Jahn is literal — it’s a father-and-son story. Fred Jahn founded his gallery in Munich back in 1978, after years in the art world dating to 1964, working with artists like Walter de Maria, Georg Baselitz, and Gerhard Richter. His focus was always on drawings and works on paper by major postwar figures — Baselitz, Per Kirkeby, Imi Knoebel, Hermann Nitsch, Arnulf Rainer, Sigmar Polke.

Thirty years later, his son Matthias Jahn opened his own space in Munich’s Gärtnerplatz district in 2008, concentrating on younger contemporary painters and sculptors, many from Günther Förg’s circle. In 2017, the two galleries merged into Jahn und Jahn, combining the weight of postwar German art with a living interest in what’s being made now.

Lisbon came in 2022 — their first expansion beyond Munich.

Encounter & The Shared Space

On September 22, 2022, Jahn und Jahn and Encounter Contemporary (a London-based gallery run by Alexander Caspari since 2014) opened a shared gallery space here on Rua de São Bernardo. The idea is a gallery-share model: both programs run simultaneously under one roof, creating unexpected dialogues between their respective artists.

The space is generous — seven exhibition rooms, two viewing rooms, and a sculpture garden — which means you can experience two or three different shows in a single visit. The building’s characteristic sequence of rooms creates a natural rhythm as you move through, each room almost self-contained but part of a larger narrative.

Carolina Trigueiros directs the Lisbon program, bringing deep connections to the Portuguese art scene. For Jahn und Jahn, this is about linking their German postwar and contemporary program with a local community. For Encounter, it was their first permanent space after years of nomadic exhibitions in London.

The inaugural shows in September 2022 set the tone: Jahn und Jahn opened with 14 rooms, a group exhibition of Heinz Butz, Fernanda Fragateiro, Imi Knoebel, and Kirsten Ortwed — abstract and minimalist works emphasizing material, colour, and haptic contours. Navid Nuur installed Broken Ellipse in the garden (fluorescent tube, blue gas, broken glass). Encounter opened with solo shows by Antony Cairns and Vanessa Da Silva.

Notas de Rodapé — The Exhibition That Brought Me Here

February 7 – March 14, 2026

Notas de Rodapé (“Footnotes”) is a group exhibition bringing together eight artists: Sara Bichão, Catarina Dias, António Júlio Duarte, Carlos Noronha Feio, Julius Heinemann, Raphaela Melsohn, Navid Nuur, and Jorge Queiroz. The title alone is evocative — footnotes as the things that sit at the margins of the main text, the asides and clarifications that sometimes contain more truth than the body they annotate.

My main reason for visiting was António Júlio Duarte. Born in Lisbon in 1965, he studied photography at Ar.Co and later at the Royal College of Art in London on a Gulbenkian scholarship. What I find compelling about his work is how he describes it: an “intuitive, sometimes visceral, response to places, people, animals and situations.” He deliberately uses flash photography rather than tripods — he wants you to know you’re looking at a photograph, not a transparent window onto reality. His images of urban environments carry dystopian undertones without ever being explicitly apocalyptic. Buildings, streets, artificial nature, crowds — there’s a science-fiction quality produced by reality itself.

His books tell you a lot about his range and obsessions: Oriente/Ocidente (1995), Peepshow (1999), Lotus (2001), White Noise (2011), Japan Drug (2014), Against the Day (2019). His work is in major collections — Serralves Foundation, Calouste Gulbenkian, the Portuguese Centre of Photography, Musée de la Photographie in Charleroi. He’s one of those photographers whose consistency comes from constant reflection on the medium itself and on the power of wandering.

As he once put it: photographs should be “vaguely familiar, but plant the seeds for every other kind of interpretation and meanings without offering too many elements.” That tension — between recognition and mystery — is exactly what draws me to his work.

Visitor Information

• Address: Rua de São Bernardo 15, 1200-823 Lisboa
• Nearest landmark: Jardim da Estrela / British Embassy
• Website: jahnundjahn.com
• Free admission

Recent Visit

I went to the opening of Notas de Rodape & Undertones in February 2026 — two shows running simultaneously, one on each side of the shared space. It’s a perfect example of what this gallery model does at its best.

What Makes This Place Worth Returning To

It’s the combination of things — the 19th-century architecture that hasn’t been sterilised, the patio that gives the space breathing room, the dual-gallery model that guarantees you’ll encounter something unexpected. Lisbon has no shortage of galleries, but Jahn und Jahn brings something specific: a bridge between the rigour of German postwar abstraction and the vitality of the Portuguese contemporary scene. The fact that they opened with Fernanda Fragateiro alongside Imi Knoebel tells you everything about their curatorial instinct — local and international in genuine dialogue, not just cosmetic diversity.