Zara’s Marta Ortega Perez Takes Peter Lindbergh Show to Galicia
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Marta Ortega Perez, the newly appointed chair of Inditex, is paying homage to her late friend Peter Lindbergh with a retrospective of his work that’s set to open this weekend in A Coruña, hometown of the fast-fashion giant in northwestern Spain.
The exhibition, “Untold Stories,” was designed by Lindbergh himself, and will occupy a converted industrial building in the A Coruña harbor area, an architectural space created by Elsa Urquijo. It will run from Dec. 4 until Feb. 28, and features more than 150 photographs ranging from the early 1980s to 2019.
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The show and the space are part of a wider initiative to promote A Coruña, a bustling port city that’s also home to Estrella Galicia beer, as a cultural hub.
There are images of Nicole Kidman, Charlotte Rampling, Uma Thurman and the celebrity models of the 1990s, including Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss.
Courtesy image
Lindbergh spent two years selecting the images, and the show is the first and only exhibition that he ever curated. He died in 2019, five months before the show opened at Kunstpalast Düsseldorf.
The Lindbergh exhibition is one of many creative projects that Ortega Perez has spearheaded over the years at Inditex, and at Zara specifically. She staged the show, a personal project, because she was determined to see Lindbergh’s spirit live on, and to share his legacy in her native Galicia.
Peter Lindbergh/Courtesy of Peter Lindbergh Foundation, Paris
“Peter and Galicia have great similarities: savage nature, natural beauty, the human warmth that makes you feel alive,” said Ortega Perez, adding that she wants “each Coruñés, each Galician, each Spaniard, and everyone who travels the world and arrives in this wonderful land, to freely enjoy and appreciate this exquisite exhibition that Peter prepared to the last detail.”
The photographer’s son, Benjamin Lindbergh, said that Galicia’s “gloomy weather, the tumultuous tide waves intertwined with the omnipresent industrial background, seemed like a perfect counterpart to the Ruhr region, where my father grew up in Germany.”
He said the city — and the new space — served as an ideal backdrop for “Untold Stories.” The A Coruña exhibition is being presented with the Lindbergh Foundation under the direction of Benjamin Lindbergh.
Peter Lindbergh/Courtesy of Peter Lindbergh Foundation, Paris
The show in Galicia comes in the wake of another Lindbergh project that Ortega Perez organized last summer, with help from Fabien Baron.
In July, Zara unveiled a tribute collection of T-shirts and sweatshirts showcasing some of the photographer’s most famous black-and-white images of Kate Moss, Amber Valletta, Linda Evangelista, Helena Christensen and Lynne Koester.
All proceeds from the collection went to the Franca Fund, named for the late Franca Sozzani, the longtime editor of Vogue Italia.
Baron, who was close friends with Lindbergh, described the current exhibition as the photographer’s passion project. “He spent time looking at his life, and then putting it on a wall. The show is just how he wanted it — it was his baby, the show of his life.”
In a telephone interview Baron added that Ortega Perez should take credit for keeping the show alive after it shut in Germany. “She’s keeping the flame going, and that was very brave of her to do,” he said.
The show is accompanied by a special edition of the Taschen book “Untold Stories.”
Peter Lindbergh/Courtesy of Peter Lindbergh Foundation, Paris
A new book, “Raw Beauty,” features interviews and images of Campbell, Moss, Penélope Cruz and the Spanish singer and actress Rosalía. There are also essays by Nick Knight and architect David Chipperfield.
Michel Benson, who wrote “Raw Beauty,” said in a telephone interview that the light, the printing and everything about the exhibition is “how Peter wanted it. He was very interested in natural light — he loved it.”
Peter Lindbergh/Courtesy of Peter Lindbergh Foundation, Paris
Benson added that the images in the show capture Lindbergh’s sensitivity to “performance, movement and dance.” The images of Tina Turner, Rosalía, and the dancers in the New York City ballet, he said, “transcend their context.”
Earlier this week, Ortega Perez and Benjamin Lindbergh hosted an opening party in A Coruña, with guests including Campbell, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Luca Guadagnino, Chipperfield, Clare Waight Keller and Aurélie Bidermann.
Ortega Perez tapped the chef Albert Adria to create the cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, while the dinner was prepared by the Galician chef Culler de Pau. The British singer-songwriter Lianne La Havas performed after dinner.
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