‘Irving Penn: Centennial’ offers an unparalleled look at the seminal American photographer’s oeuvre

Since it was established in 2022, the MOP Foundation in the relatively little-known city of A Coruña in Galicia, Spain, has hosted a surprisingly high-profile roster of photographic greats in its on-site gallery – among them, rare and expansive exhibitions of the work of Peter Lindbergh, Steven Meisel, and Helmut Newton, each best known for their fashion photography. And, as of this week, it is the turn of legendary American photographer Irving Penn, who is celebrated in what will be his first retrospective on Spanish soil (showing 23 November 2024 – 1 May 2025).

The reason is the MOP Foundation’s eponymous founder, Marta Ortega Pérez, a Spanish businesswoman who is chair of Inditex, currently the world’s largest fashion retailer (she is also the daughter of Amancio Ortega, head of the Ortega family and the owner of Inditex). Best known for its ownership of high street behemoth Zara, Inditex is based in Arteixo, Galicia, a coastal town just 20 minutes or so outside of A Coruña, where the MOP Foundation is based. Of the foundation’s aim, Ortega Pérez says it is ‘focused on holding world-class exhibitions [on] three pillars: A Coruña, photography and fashion’.

‘Irving Penn: Centennial’ in A Coruña, Spain

The new exhibition is titled ‘Irving Penn: Centennial’ and provides a broad survey of the 20th-century photographer’s work, which is at once classical and stripped back, meticulous without sign of effort, and always with an innate sense of grandeur and scale that recalls the great masters of art – whether photographing a blooming flower, a crumpled cigarette packet, distant tribespeople, or a model in an haute couture gown for the cover of Vogue. His was a mastery of craft in the truest sense, from the exacting compositions of light and set design – one famous series saw his subjects, from Marlene Dietrich to Marcel Duchamp, penned into tight corners to observe the way they interacted with space – to his rigorous printing process, with which he endlessly experimented, often reprinting the same images in numerous formats (from gelatin-silver prints to platinum-palladium, for which he is best known).

‘Irving Penn – for me, those two short words conjure a world of unparalleled photographic excellence,’ says Ortega Pérez of her decision for Penn to be the latest highlighted artist at the MOP Foundation. ‘From the perfectly pitched portraits of celebrities or of the tradespeople, street vendors and residents of Dahomey; New Guinea; Cuzco, or wherever else his restless egalitarian spirit led him. Each and every one of his photographs is made with the meticulous craftsmanship of an artist who once famously declared himself to be in awe of the camera: “I recognise it for the instrument that it is, part Stradivarius, part scalpel”.’

The wide-ranging exhibition – which is organised by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in collaboration with The Irving Penn Foundation – spans several decades of Penn’s work, from the late 1930s to the early 2000s (Penn died in 2009, aged 92). Works on display include fashion editorial, portraiture, still-lifes, nudes and photographs taken on his far-reaching travels, while ephemera includes one of Penn’s cameras, a fabric backdrop used for his portraits, and original copies of Vogue featuring his work.

‘It’s a celebration of artistry, vision and printmaking,’ continues Ortega Pérez. ‘I am thrilled to bring this [exhibition] to A Coruña for its final act. We do so not only to enrich the cultural life of A Coruña but also as an invitation to all those who admire Penn’s work to visit us here at the foundation’s unique dockside exhibition space. And to fall in love (again) with a photographer whose work remains as relevant and powerful today as it was decades ago.’

‘Irving Penn Centennial’, The MOP Foundation, Muelle de Batería, A Coruña, from 23 November 2024 – 1 May 2025.

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