The Madonna Nudes - 30th Anniversary Exhibition @ Seven Dials, London

Available to buy from £3,400 and guaranteed to become serious collectors’ items.

LONDON.- In 1979, an unknown Madonna Ciccone posed nude for New York Photographer Martin H. M. Schreiber, for just $30 as she modeled to pay her way through dance school. Six years on in the early years of her stellar stardom, Martin spotted her on the cover of Time Magazine and the penny dropped – literally!

Martin dug out his intimate portraits, taken whilst teaching a photography course at the world-famous Parsons School, and offered them to Playboy Magazine. They were notoriously published in their 1985 September issue, catapulting him to fame.

Now, thirty years on the capital is gearing up for Madonna’s arrival on her Sticky & Sweet tour on 4th and 5th July. To celebrate, Seven Dials, Covent Garden’s hidden village, is set to play host to the London premiere of The Madonna Nudes - 30th Anniversary exhibition, a collection of these intimate photographs of the fifty year old pop Diva, taken when she was just 20.

Available to buy from £3,400 and guaranteed to become serious collectors’ items, this series of black and white photographs capture Madonna’s exceptional beauty as a young woman with a toned body, perfect breasts and great skin. The languid, innocent look in her eyes betrays nothing of the pop superstar and business genius she was to become.

Also for sale is a unique piece of never seen before memorabilia – a one off print of the original Polaroid test shot, which, included with the original model release and the Polaroid, is expected to fetch in excess of £40,000. This would eclipse the previous record of $37,500 recently paid at auction earlier this year for the Lee Friedlander photograph which also featured in the 1985 Playboy.

For those on a more modest budget, but wanting a little snippet of Madge, exclusive Madonna Nudes memorabilia including badges, postcards, books and original copies of the aforementioned Playboy magazine is available to buy from just £1.

The exhibition will be co-hosted by Seven Dials and Impure Art (the UK’s only erotic art gallery) who are exclusively handling the sale of the Madonna Nudes 30th Anniversary collection. See www.impureart.com for details.

Jamie McCartney of Impure Art comments; “When you have wonderful nude photos of a beautiful young woman, taken by a great photographer and she happens to be a global icon, it’s a no brainer. With such a fantastic central London venue and with Madonna herself being in town, we are expecting huge interest.”

Donna Lambert, Communications Manager for Seven Dials adds, “We are very excited about facilitating The Madonna Nudes and the attention that the exhibition is expected to receive. It’s a great addition for the Seven Dials visitor to enjoy.”

The Madonna Nudes will showcase at 19 Earlham Street, Seven Dials, WC2 from 2nd to 19th July. The gallery will be open seven days - Monday to Saturday, 12-7pm, and Sunday 12-6pm.

Martin has spent a lifetime taking photographs. As a young man he spent 2 years developing his eye and technical abilities under the not too watchful eye of the US military. During this period he worked freelance for the New York Times. After his discharge in 1968 he attended the School of Visual Arts in New York. Bored by the draft dodgers and absent professors he quit and went solo. In 1971 he won an honorable mention in the first Life Magazine photography contest in which there were 40,000 entrants. Published on a full page and paid $600, this was the start of a brilliant career.

In 1977 he began teaching a course at Parsons on photographing the nude, which subsequently ran for the next 8 years. His first book entitled BODYSCAPES was published in 1980. For his next book project, based on a deep love of the mythic cowboy, he spent the next 18 months riding horses, chasing cattle and cowboys throughout Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. LAST OF A BREED came out in 1982. He was already showing work in galleries and working hard to become a household name in photography. Martin now lives in France and continues to work on personal projects, a camera always at his side.