The Exhibition at the Spanish Museum Highlights the Photographer’s Connections with the Fashion World
The work of iconic American fashion photographer Irving Penn’s is set to be celebrated in a new retrospective at the Marta Ortega Pérez Foundation in A Coruña, Spain. “Irving Penn: Centennial” will run from November 23 to May 1, 2025, featuring 175 works ranging from celebrity portraits to abstract nudes and compositions of flowers.
“Irving Penn’s image making is exemplary. In Penn’s hands, the everyday becomes extraordinary, revealing the profound beauty in simplicity. His work does more than capture moments; it captures the essence of his subjects and invites us to see the world anew,” said Pérez, president of the MOP Foundation and non-executive chair of Zara parent company Inditex.
Penn was a regular contributor to Vogue magazine for more than seven decades, during which time he helped to revolutionize fashion photography, positioning models against neutral backdrops to emphasize fabrics, gesture, and expression. His fashion work not only redefined the genre but also set new standards for artistic and technical excellence. While he is best known for these portraits, his career encompassed a wide range of perspectives and approaches, and the exhibition seeks to reflect each of these aspects.
“His enduring legacy lies in the ability of his photographs to excite our imagination every time we see them. It is truly an honor to be able to present this wonderful exhibition in A Coruña as we continue our mission to showcase the very best of fashion photography,” Pérez added.
The exhibition “Irving Penn: Centennial” initially premiered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2017, displaying portraits of iconic figures like Marlene Dietrich and Audrey Hepburn, Gianni Versace, Issey Miyake, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, and Zaha Hadid. The Spanish incarnation of the retrospective is also organized by the Met in collaboration with the Irving Penn Foundation, and for the first time ever its catalog will be translated into Spanish.
Established in 2022, the MOP Foundation is dedicated to exploring the intersection of fashion and photography as an art form, as well as a special dedication to its home of A Coruña. To date it has held three world class exhibitions: “Peter Lindbergh. Untold Stories” (2021); “Steven Meisel 1993 A Year in Photographs” (2022) and “Helmut Newton – Fact & Fiction” (2023). The Irving Penn exhibition is the fourth in this world-class series.
