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Design Category
Book design, 2006
Design firm
Estudio Interlinea (San Juan, Puerto Rico)
Collection
(2007) 50 Books/50 Covers of 2006
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After exploring body movement for 80 years (ballet, flamenco, mime and modern dance), a leading Puerto Rican theater figure thought it fit—as her swan song—to collect her memorabilia in a publication, including artwork, set and costume designs, photos (portraits, live action), original programs, posters and press clippings. Widely admired, Gilda Navarra was a muse to many artists in America and Europe, as evidenced by myriad texts and images.
Music played an important role in Ms. Navarra’s signature pieces, usually developed for silent characters. The book was thus conceived as a musical piece itself. Its design is based on an ever-present pentagram, often evident, at times suggested or just implied. Because music provides graphic representations of silence—lacking in conventional language—these symbols become metaphors for different “times” in the artist’s ever-changing, transcendental oeuvre. On the cover, a fermata, the notation for a note that is sustained for longer than its note value, hints that Gilda (hence the capital G illustrated in her embroidery style) manipulated music, theater and time in an idiosyncratic way. The white-on-white-on-white treatment further explores the expression of silence, but on purely graphic terms.
“Beautiful, appropriate and understated cover.”