The volume is a guide to the exhibition Max Ernst (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 4 October 2022-26 February 2023). A smart tool which will accompany the visitor through the halls of the first Italian retrospective dedicated to a multifaceted artist (1891-1976) and which presents more than 400 works including paintings, to sculptures, drawings, collages, jewels and illustrated books from museums, foundations and private collections in Italy and abroad.

Deep connoisseur and visionary interpreter of the art history, philosophy, sciences and alchemy, Max Ernst slips out of any whatsoever definition and is presented in this context such as a humanist in the Neo-Renaissance sense.

Visitors are called to engage in fascinating and intriguing games of perception between marvel and amazement, where logic and formal harmony are accompanied by impenetrable enigmas, where works, techniques and constellations of symbols lead beyond the painting.

Together with the guide, the exhibition catalogue, richly illustrated and with numerous in-depth essays as well as a new edition, always by Electa, of two fundamental works by Paola Dècina Lombardi about the Surreal movement: Surrealismo 1919-1969. Ribellione e immaginazione (Surrealism 1919-1969. Rebellion and Imagination) and La donna, la libertà, l’amore. Un’antologia sul surrealismo (The Woman, the Freedom, the Love. An anthology about Surrealism).