Uwe Ommer. Black Ladies (Relié)

Taschen's Great Adventure began back in 1980, when eighteen-year-old Benedikt Taschen opened a shop in his native Cologne, Germany, to market his massive comics collection. Within a year he began publishing catalogues promoting his wares, but it wasn't until 1984 that his first art-book breakthrough occurred: he purchased 40,000 remainder copies of a Magritte book printed in English, reselling them for a fraction of their original price. From a young age, Taschen had been interested in art but found that art books were too expensive and hard to obtain, and the success of this daring move proved that Taschen was not alone in thinking that the art-book market should be democratized. Soon he began reprinting books under his own name for budget prices and the next year he published his first original title and the first book in the Basic Art series: Picasso. Before long, high-quality-yet-still-inexpensive hardcover books were added to the lineup and in 1989 the landmark double-jumbo Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings hit bookstores around the world.

Starting in the late 1980s, Taschen established subsidiaries across the globe and continued to cement its reputation as a publisher of excellent-value books while branching out into new areas such as architecture, design, photography, lifestyle and classics. 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. A year later Taschen launched its cinema collection with Billy Wilder's Some Like it Hot. Then, in 2003, Taschen tipped the scales with its massive, legendary Muhammad Ali tribute book, GOAT.

Twenty-five years after Benedikt Taschen opened his little comics shop, 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 and budget ranges, distributed worldwide in over twenty languages. Within the space of the last few years, Taschen has opened bookshops in Paris, Los Angeles, New York, London, Brussels, Berlin and Copenhagen with plans to keep expanding to new cities as our Great Adventure continues. For the future of publishing, keep your eye on Taschen.