Max Jahn

Max Jahn (b. 1998, Berlin) is a self-taught painter working primarily on a small scale, creating portraits and still lifes defined by quiet, concentrated intensity. Growing up in Berlin and spending time in his father’s antique store cultivated his sensitivity to objects, materials, and the presence they carry. Raised in East Berlin, a neighborhood steeped in the legacy of famous poets and pre-war flappers, Jahn was surrounded by the ghosts of the 1920s, as artworks and household objects migrated from the shop into his home—living rooms of the past dismantled and reassembled in his childhood environment.

After studying landscape architecture, he turned to painting pastoral scenes before immersing himself fully in portraiture. He spent hours at the Gemäldegalerie Berlin studying faces in Dutch Master paintings, repeatedly painting his own, shedding the echoes of Dix and Freud to arrive at a singular, personal hand. His work warps the influences of Balthus and the Dutch Masters into an unmistakable style: intimate, attentive, and alive. Painting directly from life, Jahn lets careful observation dictate the rhythm and structure of each work. The result carries the sincerity of a love song and the restless spirit of punk.