Benedikt Taschen’s career started in 1984, when he bought 40,000 remainder copies of a Magritte monograph published in English with money borrowed from his family. The books sold through at double the price and he was soon publishing his own books.
By the late 1990s TASCHEN had become a household name in publishing. The titles were available in over a dozen languages at prices that finally made art books affordable to students and collectors alike.
Today, TASCHEN has offices in Cologne, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Paris and Tokyo and stores in Paris, Los Angeles and New York, all designed by Philippe Starck. TASCHEN employs 200 staff members worldwide and many long time freelance editors. As Billy Wilder put it in Vanity Fair 2000: “Benedikt reminds me of an old-time Hollywood figure – a studio head, someone who is in firm command and has his hand in everything.”
