LONDON — The first Spanish retrospective of fashion photographer Irving Penn is landing at the Marta Ortega Pérez Foundation, located in the northwestern coastal city of A Coruña, Spain, on Saturday.
Running until May 1, the exhibition “Irving Penn: Centennial” will showcase some 175 of Penn’s works, ranging from portraits of celebrities, cultural figures, tradespeople, street vendors and residents of Cusco, Peru, as well as abstract nudes, flowers, signage, fashion studies and still lives.
Marlene Dietrich, New York, 1948
Courtesy of Marta Ortega Pérez Foundation/The Irving Penn Foundation
Highlights include images of Marlene Dietrich, Audrey Hepburn, Gianni Versace, Issey Miyake, Yves Saint Laurent, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Salvador Dalí, Zaha Hadid and Richard Avedon, many of which were shot during his seven-decades contribution to Vogue.
The retrospective marks the fourth in a series of exhibitions presented by the MOP Foundation president Marta Ortega Pérez, daughter of Inditex owner Amancio Ortega. Previous photographers celebrated at the foundation included Peter Lindbergh, Steven Meisel and Helmut Newton.
“Woman in Chicken Hat (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn),” New York, 1949
Courtesy of Marta Ortega Pérez Foundation/The Irving Penn Foundation
Calling Penn’s image-making “exemplary,” Ortega Pérez said his name conjures “a world of unparalleled photographic excellence” and that Penn possessed the uncanny ability to infuse his photographs with a sense of timelessness and narrative depth.
“For me, Penn is not only a formidable image-maker, but as his fashion photography showed, he was a remarkable innovator. He transformed the portrayal of haute couture into timeless art and set the scene for those that followed him at Vogue and elsewhere. It was Penn who first seized on the possibility that magazine photographs might have a life beyond the printed page,” Ortega Pérez added.
“Naomi Sims in Scarf,” New York, circa 1969
Courtesy of Marta Ortega Pérez Foundation/The Irving Penn Foundation
“Penn: Centennial” originated as an exhibition organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Irving Penn Foundation in 2017 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the legendary photographer, who passed away in 2009.
A Spanish version of the exhibition catalogue will be added for the exhibition at the MOP Foundation.
“I firmly believe that our partnership with the Penn Foundation and one of the world’s most famous museums is an endorsement of all the MOP Foundation has achieved to date and an important part of our slowly unfolding celebration of style and fashion through the medium of photography,” added Ortega Pérez, who launched her namesake foundation in 2022 to promote photography, fashion and A Coruña.
