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orn in Manchester, Frank Cohen is sometimes referred to as ‘the
Saatchi of the North’. Th e founder of a successful chain of DIY
stores, he began collecting modern British artists such as LS Lowry and
Edward Burra in the 1970s, before turning his attention to the
contemporary art scene. In 2003 he was among the panel of judges that
awarded Grayson Perry the Turner Prize, and in 2007 he launched Initial
Access, a vast exhibition space on the outskirts of Wolverhampton. Sir
Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate, has dubbed him ‘one of the great
collectors working anywhere in Europe or America today’, and his
collection includes works by Stanley Spencer, LS Lowry, Edward Burra,
Franz West, Carsten Höller and Ai Weiwei.
Th e very fi rst piece of art I bought was a Lowry, in the late 1970s. It was
six inches by four inches, postcard size. It’s funny how it came about. I was
in the paint and wallpaper trade, in Manchester, and one day a guy came
in and asked if I wanted to give a nice-looking girl a job for the summer
PRIVATART
COLLECTOR: FRANK COHEN
First piece: Th e Family by LS Lowry, 1962
Sixty-Nine
holidays. I was single in those days, and I thought: ‘Send any bird you
want!’ So Cherryl – now my wife – began working in the shop.
It turned out her father was an art dealer, a very funny man called Jack
Garson, with a warehouse full of objets d’art: Renaissance Italian paintings,
suits of armour, snooker tables, all sorts. He was also selling signed Lowry
prints, just pieces of paper, really, with a photograph of the painting.
Anyway, when I started to take Cherryl out, I used to go to the house to
pick her up – and every time I went round there, her father made me buy
another signed bloody Lowry print from him.
Did I want them? Did I heck! But it got me interested in buying an
original. I paid £1,100 for Th e Family; even back then, you could never buy a
Lowry dead cheap. I’m a northern lad, that’s why I liked his work. And I
didn’t know anything else; I’d just started looking at art, and had no idea
about other artists. After that, I kept buying more and more Lowrys,
whenever I had the money. I ended up with about 47. I’ve still got three or
four, but not Th e Family; it was tiny, and I traded it in for something bigger.
Father & Two Sons by
LS Lowry, 1950. Cohen’s
fi rst piece by the same
artist was Th e Family