The Marta Ortega Pérez Foundation (MOP) in A Coruña presents the largest retrospective ever held in Spain of one of photography's most gifted alchemists.
For the past three years, the MOP Foundation, set up by Marta Ortega Pérez, President of the Inditex Group, which also owns the Zara brand, has been helping to revitalize La Coruña, on Spain's northwest coast. The Galician city is known for its rich cultural and artistic heritage, as well as for its Hercules Tower, the world's oldest lighthouse, in operation for over two thousand years.
This new space, designed by architect Elsa Urquijo, was originally a former silo used as an industrial warehouse. Today, it showcases the city-sea relationship on the Quai de la Batterie (Muelle de la Batería). After three successive exhibitions on Peter Lindberg (1944-2019), Steven Meisel (1954-) and Helmut Newton (1920-2004), it's Irving Penn's (1917-2009) turn to invade this venue, dedicated to photography, fashion and A Coruña.
The "Centennial" retrospective was first created in 2017 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) in New York, in collaboration with the Irving Penn Foundation, to mark the centenary of the birth of this leading figure in photography. The exhibition featured 300 legendary images, memorable engravings and meticulous prints.
A REMARKABLE SIGNATURE
The MOP Foundation celebrates his innovative and avant-garde career, from his beginnings in the 1930s to the first decade of the 21st century. This collection, never before presented in Spain, features over 160 photographs, including previously unseen pieces and a series of essays that offer an overview of his main themes and works.
Here we find the serene beauty of fashion models, notably his wife Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, exquisite nudes, the emotion of aging flowers, still lifes. And, of course, his portraits of celebrities such as Pablo Picasso, Marlene Dietrich, Yves Saint Laurent and Alfred Hitchcock, and his series of photos of ordinary people, taken around the world in his portable studio.
And, as usual, the Fondation MOP is making way for a new spatial composition, both inside and out. At the heart of the silo, it also inaugurates its bookshop, specializing in photography, fashion, design and other artistic disciplines.
" IRVING PENN: CENTENNIAL"
FONDATION MOP
MUELLE DE LA BATERÍA, A CORUÑA (ESPAGNE)
UNTIL MAY 1, 2025
THEMOPFOUNDATION.ORG/EN
