MARADONA ─ Maurice van Es

An artist’s book exploring football, image culture and the figure of Diego Maradona through an obsessive act of collection.

MARADONA is an artist’s book by Dutch photographer Maurice van Es, and part of his ongoing series on football, visual culture and the image. The second volume in the series, it centres on photographs of Diego Maradona, the Argentine icon. Across 368 pages, van Es attempts to construct as complete a portrait of Maradona as possible, drawing on more than 1,000 scanned images gathered over four years from magazines, postcards, fanzines, gossip publications and other printed matter.

Raised in poverty and ending his life surrounded by wealth and excess, Maradona came to embody the trajectory of glory and downfall so often associated with footballers of the 1980s and ’90s. Marked by addiction, indulgence and decline, he appeared driven by a constant desire for more, never fully satisfied. In this sense, Maradona could be seen as almost embodying cocaine itself. And yet, alongside this intensity, his love of football remained singular: few players have ever touched the ball with such tenderness and intimacy.

First edition of 1,000 copies.

—

Title: MARADONA
Artist: Maurice van Es
Publisher: Self-published, 2025
Format: Embossed softcover with one tipped-in photograph
Size: 315 × 225 mm
Pages: 368
Language: English
Edition: First edition of 1,000 copies
ISBN: 978-90-834047-9-0

Condition: Minor bumped corners from transit.