Surrealist Fish illustrations. Exerpt from Serafini, Luigi. Codex Seraphinianus, Chapter 2. Fauna.
Codex Seraphinianus, originally published in 1981, is an illustrated encyclopedia of an imaginary world, created by the Italian artist, architect and industrial designer Luigi Serafini during thirty months, from 1976 to 1978. The book is approximately 360 pages long (depending on edition), and written in a strange, generally unintelligible alphabet.
The word “Codex" in the title means "book" or "code" (from Latin caudex), and “Seraphinianus” is derived from the author’s last name, Serafini (which in Italian, refers to the seraphs). Literally, Codex Seraphinianus means Serafini’s code.