See Article 8 of item 3536: Designers & Books by Peter Kraus, 2020

Text by Guillaume Tempel. 30 folded folio leaves. Illuminated by Iliazd. Illustrated with 34 coloured etchings and aquatints by Max Ernst, 6 being double-page. Large folio, 415 x 311 mm, each sheet mounted on tabs and bound by Pierre-Lucien Martin in 1980 in smooth-polished cream calf laid onto crushed black morocco, each board with semi-circular design echoing the famous Ernst aquatint in the book "Éloignée du Soleil." Within the semi-circles is a blue and black relief consisting of concentric circles. End sheets and flyleaves of blue suede. Preserved in matching chemise with parchment spine and slipcase. Paris: Iliazd & Le Degré Quarante et Un, 1964.

Edition limited to 75 copies signed by Ernst and Iliazd. Maximiliana is not only considered to be the chef-d'oeuvre in book form of the artist Max Ernst and of the Russian avant-garde book-designer Iliazd, but it is also one of the outstanding illustrated books of the twentieth century.

Iliazd was the pseudonym of Ilia Zdanevich (1894-1975) a native of Tbilisi in Russia. He arrived in Paris in 1921 and began a heralded career publishing livres d'peintre known for eccentric graphic design and avant-garde typography. Beside his great Maximiliana, Iliazd issued nine artist's books with Picasso.

Ernst Wilhelm Tempel (1821-1889), an unknown and unrecognized German lithographer and astronomer, discovered the planet "65" in 1861, which he named after the Bavarian Emperor Maximilian II; it was later renamed Cybele. Iliazd designed the text for the book from Tempel's diaries, letters and poems, focusing on Tempel's astronomical discoveries, his lack of recognition, and his independent and unrelenting spirit.

"The supreme achievement of the post-war years in book-form is uncontestably the Maximiliana ou L'Exercice Illégal de L'Astronomie which was published in 1964. Monumental in scale, and marked in its tech-nical procedures by a perfectionism which many had supposed to be extinct… Max Ernst designed a secret language; page after page of cursive script that never repeats itself, never drops into recognizable imagery and never divagates, equally, into any alphabet know to us. Interleaved with these pages is a series of thirty-three etchings by Max Ernst: without being directly illustrative, these relate to Tempel's work among comets, planets and nebulae, to the drawings which he made of his discoveries, and to his skill as print-maker. But above all they are an act of homage to one who was, like Max Ernst himself, a lifelong watcher of the skies, inward and outward" (John Russell, Max Ernst, Life and Work, pp. 201-202).

"Ernst unquestionably attained with Maximiliana in 1964 his highest accomplishment in print art, he again adapted indirect, semi-automatic procedures originating in Surrealism of the 1920s for the realization of the book's thirty-four etchings and aquatints" (Rainwater, Max Ernst, Beyond Surrealism, p. 34).

The binder, Pierre-Lucien Martin (1913-1985), designed several custom bindings for Maximiliana beginning in 1967, however, only three examples remain known. As here, Martin's designs for these bindings incorporated imagery from Ernst's illustrations within the book.

Limitation: Edition limited to 65 copies printed on chiffres Arabes paper and 10 copies on Romains Japon ancien paper. This is copy #11 of the 65; signed by Ernst and Iliazd on the title-pages.

Maximiliana is extremely rare on the market. Condition is very fine; only fault is small traces of scotch tape to parchment spine of protective box.

Rainwater, Max Ernst, Beyond Surrealism 82, and long essay specifically on Maximiliania, pp. 126-156.

Spies & Leppien, Max Ernst. Das Graphische Werk 95.

Castleman, A Century of Artists Books 99.

Rodocanachi, Pierre-Lucien Martin. Reliures, 1948-1977, No. 48.

Coron, 50 Livres illustrés depuis 1947, No. 33.