Matter and Memory:
the Patriarch’s Realm

To mark the 90th birthday of Jean-François Jaeger, the gallery which now bears his name is to host an exhibition celebrating his 66 years as a gallery owner. It will look back over his career through the prism of the artists he championed, the long-running relationships he forged with art critics, institutions and numerous collectors.

Rather than simply stacking up memories from exhibitions past, “Matter and Memory: the Patriarch’s Realm” takes up the challenge of plotting the course of a long career by following the creative development of the avant-garde artists that Jean-François Jaeger promoted, as well as highlighting his precocious perceptiveness and characteristic humility, which is seen in the motto that best expresses how he lives his life, “Nothing belongs to me and I belong to everything”.

Organized by Jean-François Jaeger’s daughter, Véronique Jaeger, who took over the running of the gallery’s two Parisian exhibition spaces a few years ago, the show is both a tribute to a pioneering, talented and passionate defender of the arts and a chance to rediscover the works of the artists and movements that have marked the history of art in Paris from the post-war period to the present day.