[attach id=296007 size="medium"]A self-portrait from Godwin Cutajar’s mirror series.[/attach]
Focusing on a collection of still-life drawings, figure and portrait drawings, paintings from sculptures and nudes, Godwin Cutajar’s recently published The Unfinished Monograph is presented in an uncommon format that follows a scrapbook concept.
The book includes most of the drawings the artist finished during his student years in Rome, between 1988 and 1993, as well as a selection from the nude self-portraits that were executed from a mirror Cutajar had in his lodgings in Rome. The monograph also contains a collection of autobiographical essays.
Cutajar’s monograph is composed of seven groups of coloured pages, which together create a rainbow.
The designs look as if they have been glued to the pages, while the autobiographical essays are printed as if written by hand. Among these is a very short essay that can be read only in a mirror.
The autobiographical essays, together with the drawings, are described by the artist as “practically” a diary; after his last essay, Cutajar has left some blank pages which evoke a life journey still to be completed, hence the term ‘the unfinished monograph’ in the title.
The Unfinished Monograph has been printed in a limited amount, with each book having one page different from the rest, in order to preserve its uniqueness.
The monograph includes a forward by Prof. Oliver Friggieri.