Founded in 1988 with the intention to promote creativity and safeguard heritage, the Loewe Foundation is on a constant mission to celebrate cultural excellence. Joining forces with The Prado Museum in Madrid, the Foundation announces a writer-in-residency programme, inviting internationally renowned wordsmiths to sift through the museum’s collections and sprawling archives as a source of inspiration for literary creation – the resulting works will be published jointly by The Prado and literary magazine Granta. Kicking off in style, the first recipient is Nobel Prize winner John Maxwell Coetzee.

Known for works such as the Robinson Crusoe-inspired Foe and Booker Prize Winner Disgrace, the South African author has become one of the world’s most decorated novelists as he places a postmodernist lens over themes of the coloniser and the colonised. Set to spend three weeks engaging with all the museum has to offer, Coetzee’s literary contributions will be the first to be published in a collection dedicated to the symbiotic relationship between fiction and the visual arts. Throughout his Spanish residency, Coetzee will also host a series of public talks with philosopher and writer Mariana Dimópulos, meditating on the micro and the macro of his findings within the museum walls.