Max Ernst In-text plate (page 27) from 65 Maximiliana ou l'exercice illégal de l'astronomie 1964

  • Not on view

65 Maximiliana is the culmination of Ernst’s profound engagement with illustrated books. The project was a collaboration between the artist and Iliazd (Il’ia Zdanevich), a Georgian-born book designer and publisher. The title refers to a planetoid discovered in 1861 by the unsung German astronomer Ernst Wilhelm Tempel, who named it in honor of Maximilian II, then king of Bavaria. Ernst’s text and biomorphic aquatints pay homage to Tempel as a kindred spirit seeking to represent domains outside ordinary human perception; they are complemented by the typography that Iliazd designed to float, constellation-like, across each page. Ernst also added a hieroglyphic script of his own invention to many of the pages.

Gallery label from Max Ernst: Beyond Painting, September 23, 2017-January 1, 2018.
Author
Max Ernst
Medium
Aquatint from an illustrated book with twenty-eight etchings (nine with aquatint) and six aquatints
Dimensions
plate: 12 3/8 × 6 5/8" (31.5 × 16.8 cm); page: 16 1/8 × 11 15/16" (40.9 × 30.4 cm)
Publisher
Ilia Zdanevich
Printer
Georges Visat, Louis Lemoine
Edition
65
Credit
Gift of David S. Orentreich, MD
Object number
1632.2015.27
Copyright
© 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Department
Drawings and Prints

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