Mekelweg 5, 2628 CD Delft, Netherlands
In the year 1918 Escher attended the Technical College of Delft (now Delft University of Technology).
1930
M.C. Escher, in Rome.
M. C. Escher.
M.C. Escher signing his work.
M. C. Escher.
M.C. Escher wirh his works.
1927
Escher and his wife Jetta.
1930
M.C. Escher, in Rome.
1931
Family Escher-Umiker in Scheveningen in July 1931. Jetta and sons George and Jan.
Mekelweg 5, 2628 CD Delft, Netherlands
In the year 1918 Escher attended the Technical College of Delft (now Delft University of Technology).
Artist M.C. Escher demonstrates his artistic process.
Escher and his wife Jetta.
M. C. Escher in his childhood.
M. C. Escher.
M.C. Escher signing his work.
M. C. Escher.
M.C. Escher wirh his works.
M.C. Escher.
Maurits Escher (left) with his brother.
Escher was born in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, on June 17, 1898. He was the youngest son of civil engineer George Arnold Escher and Sara Gleichman. M. C. Escher had two brothers, Arnold August and Johan George Escher, and two half-brothers, Edmond George and Berend George Escher, from his father's first marriage.
M. C. Escher’s family moved to Arnhem in 1903, where he studied at local primary and secondary schools until 1918. As a child, he was frequently sick and attended a special school. Even though M. C. Escher was good at drawing, he failed his high school exams, so never officially completed his schooling. However, he took carpentry and piano lessons until the age of 13.
In the year 1918 Escher attended the Technical College of Delft (now Delft University of Technology). The following year he entered the School of Architecture and Decorative Arts, Haarlem, intending to pursue a career in architecture. However, he switched to graphic and decorative arts after a week following the advice of Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, a graphic artist and his teacher. He graduated in 1922.
Escher travelled across Italy and Spain in 1922. During his stay in Spain, he visited Alhambra, a Moorish castle, which had a profound effect on his later work. He then moved to Rome and for the next few years he regularly traveled to rugged areas of Italy, Corsica, and Sicily, often in the company of other artists, to sketch and record his impressions. During this time he began to show his prints and develop a reputation as a graphic artist, but he was principally supported by his family.
M. C. Escher's first solo show in Siena was held in August 1923, followed by another show in Holland in February 1924. In 1924, he moved back to sketching landscapes of Italy, focusing on irregular perspectives practically impossible in natural form. The late 1920s was his highly productive period for the artist, when he held numerous exhibitions in Holland and Switzerland and created some of his most beautiful landscapes and amazing illustrations, including his well-known Castrovalva in 1930.
Inspired by the picturesque mountains and ancient hill towns of Italy, Escher created 15 more woodcuts, lithographs and wood engravings. The most significant work of this period was Atrani, Coast of Amalfi (1931). However, in the early 1930s, the rise of fascism made life in Italy uncomfortable for the Eschers and in July 1935, they moved to Chateau d'Oex in Switzerland.
From May to June in 1936, M. C. Escher together with his wife Jetta made their study trip by freighter along the coast of Spain. The artist received free passage in exchange for prints of the sketches he would make along the route. During this trip he produced detailed sketches of the Alhambra and of the mosque La Mezquita in Cordoba. His work turned from landscapes to invented images and the mathematical principles which depicted nature. After the year 1936, Escher used natural elements only as an intermediate agent for more abstract explorations and subjects.
Because of the war in Europe, the family decided to move to Brussels, Belgium, in 1937. While living in Belgium, Escher started to create woodcuts based on the concept of 17-plane symmetry groups. One of his most famous prints, Day and Night, was produced during this same period and illustrated his interest in dualities and transformations. His first creation of an impossible construction was Still Life and Street (1937), which was followed by several more works, including Sky and Water (1938).
Since M. C. Escher was missing the Italian landscapes, he went to Uccle in the suburbs of Brussels, Belgium. He moved to Baam, Netherlands, during World War II in 1941, where he remained for the rest of his life. During the war, he visited the deserted house of his teacher de Mesquita and rescued the prints that had been scattered there when German troops came to the country. The artist continued to explore such concepts as capturing infinity within a single plane, self-similarity, and the relativity of perspective. Escher also developed an interest in purely geometric figures and crystals.
By the early 1950s, M. C. Escher's work had begun to draw the attention of scientists and the public, nevertheless, he was largely ignored by art critics. Articles on his artworks were published in two magazines, Time and Life, and his works began to be displayed in various galleries. Recognition from the art world finally arrived in a 1951 article in The Studio, which referred to M. C. Escher as "a remarkable and original artist who was able to depict the poetry of the mathematical side of things in a most striking way."
His first solo show in the United States took place in Washington in the early 1950s. In 1954, Escher's works were exhibited in a large show during an international mathematics conference in Amsterdam. At the same time, he continued exploring approaches to infinity and in 1956 created Print Gallery, which he considered the culmination of his expression as an artist as well as a thinker. While in the United States, he created several prints, including Relativity (1953), Print Gallery (1956), Cube with Magic Ribbons (1957), and Belvedere (1958). The 1958 saw the publication of his book titled Regular Division of the Plane.
In the 1960s, M. C. Escher's visual illusions and paradoxes found new adherents among academics who were questioning conventional views of human perception and examining alternative views of nature. Eventually, he became a cult figure and his images were reproduced on so many different ordinary objects and became a significant part of popular culture that the Escher Foundation, formed late in his life, spent much time and effort controlling the unauthorized use of his works.
M. C. Escher's first book of prints Grafiek en Tekeningen was released in 1960. It consisted of 76 works personally described by the artist. A retrospective of his artworks was held in the Hague in 1968. In 1969, he created the woodcut Snakes which became his last art piece. The following year, he was forced by declining health to move to Rosa Spier Huis in Laren, North Holland, where he resided to the end of his life.
M. C. Escher became well known among scientists and mathematicians, and in popular culture. Apart from being used in a variety of technical periodicals, his artworks also appeared on the covers of many books and albums. Escher was one of the major inspirations of Douglas Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach.
In 1955, he was granted with the Knighthood of the Order of Orange Nassau from the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In 1985 The asteroid 4444 Escher was named in Escher's honour. Besides, both Austria and the Netherlands have issued postage stamps commemorating the artist and his artworks.
To celebrate the centennial of Escher's birth, the National Gallery of Art held a retrospective exhibition in 1997-1998 which included many rare early works as well as his most famous images. An international congress of scholars in Italy celebrated his multifaceted contributions in 1998 with noted speakers from mathematics, science, art, education, psychology, as well as other disciplines. Commemorative exhibits were also held in Greece, Great Britain, and the United States.
After his death, major exhibitions have been held in cities all over the world. For instance, an exhibition of his works in Rio de Janeiro attracted more than 573,000 visitors in 2011. Its daily number of visitors of 9,677 made it the most visited museum exhibition of the year, anywhere in the world.
Today, Escher's original works are displayed at the Escher Museum in The Hague; the National Gallery of Art (Washington, District of Columbia); the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa); the Israel Museum (Jerusalem); as well as at the Huis ten Bosch (Nagasaki, Japan).
Emblemata - Steamroller
Second title-page
Hand with Fir Cone
Frog
Flor de Pascua - La Pensee
Initial S
Emblemata - Toadstool
Emblemata - Beehive
Emblemata - Buoy
Initial A
Eight Heads
Emblemata - Candle Flame
Emblemata - Dice
Initial V
Initial D
Unknown title
Emblemata - Kite
Emblemata - Vase
Wateringcan
Weather Vane
Emblemata - Signpost
Flor de Pascua - Theosophy
Vignette
Emblemata - Cactus
Scholastica (Bad Dream)
Flor de Pascua - Madonna
Emblemata - Lute
Flor de Pascua - Convention
Emblemata - Sundial
Scholastica (Flying Witch)
Initial T
Emblemata - Butterfly
Emblemata - Anvil
Initial D
Emblemata - Well
Flor de Pascua - The Weathercock
Flor de Pascua - The Scapegoat
Padlock
Emblemata - Balance
Initial O
Initial V
Emblemata - Retreat
Scholastica (cover)
Scholastica Illustration
Emblemata - Flint
Scholastica Illustration
Flor de Pascua - Whore's Superstition
Emblemata - Squirrel
Flor de Pascua - Fulfillment
Scholastica Illustration
Flor de Pascua - Untitled
Unknown title
Unknown title
The 4th Day of the Creation
Ravello II
Fiumara, Calabria
Flor de Pascua - Never think before you act
The 5th Day of the Creation
Head of a Child
Untitled
Temple of Segeste, Sicily
Chrysanthemum
The Bridge
Wood near Menton
Palm Tree sketch
Skull
Palm Tree
Seated Female Nude III
Two bells
Bookplate Bastiaan Kist
Ravello and the Coast of Amalfi
Castle in the Air
Unknown title
Farmhouse, Ravello colour
Mascot
Bookplate B.G. Escher Beer
Fiet van Stolk
Life Force
Twon Tree
Sea Shells
The Sphere
Flowers
Unknown title
Female Nude in Chair
Self-Portrait
St. Francis preaching to the Birds
Mumified Priests in Gangi
Blocks of Basalt along the Sea
View of Atrani
Smoking Warning
Self Portrait II
Self Portrait
The 1st Day of the Creation
Vitorchiano nel Cimino
Portrait of a Man
Hand with Fir Cone
Procession in Crypt
Seated Female Nude I
Rome and the Griffin of Borgheses
Female Nude I
Cloister near Rocca Imperiale, Calabria
Covered Alley in Atrani
Roosje Ingen Housz
Seated Female Nude
Paradise
Castrovalva
The 3rd Day of the Creation
Farmhouse, Ravello
Infant Arthur
Ravello III
San Michele Dei Frisone, Rome
The Hamlet of Turello, Southern Italy
Unknown title
White Cat I
Flower
Unknown title
Unknown title
San Gimignano
The Borger Oak
Unknown title
Unknown title
Atrani, Coast of Amalfi
Portrait of a Bearded Man
Unknown title
Saint Vincent Martyr
Young Thrush
Sunflowers
Self Portrait
Cimino Barbarano
Female Nude in a Landscape
Untitled
The Sea at the Mouth of the Ebro
In Mesquitas Classroom
Unknown title
Unknown title
Unknown title
San Cosimo, Ravello
Calanques de Piana
Unknown title
The 6th Day of the Creation
The Drowned Cathedral
The Fall of Man
Seated Old Woman
Tower of Babel
Seated Female Nude
Unknown title
Baby
Unknown title
Dolphins
Unknown title
Goriano Sicoli
Skull
Father with Magnifying Glass
Unknown title
Palm Tree
Unknown title
Seated Man with Cat on His Lap
Alfedena Abruzzi
Corsica Corte
San Gimignano
Citadel of Calvi Corsica
Fara San Martino, Abruzzi
Railway Bridge, Oosterbeek
Porta Maria Dell' Ospidale
The 2nd Day of the Creation
Unknown title
Self Portrait in a Chair
Unknown title
Tropea, Calabria
Portrait of a Man
Unknown title
Escher's Father
Hen with Egg
Scholastica (The Bridge)
Atrani, Coast of Amalfi
Ravello I
Morano Calabria
Italian Town
Unknown title
Parrot
Coast of Amalfi
Scholastica
Unknown title
Kairouan Tunisia
Perfume
Lion of The Fountain in The Piazza al Ravello
Fall of man
White Cat II
M. C. Escher had no interest in politics, finding it impossible to involve himself with any ideals other than the expressions of his own concepts through his own particular medium. However, he was averse to fanaticism and hypocrisy.
Quotations:
"Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs and check."
"We adore chaos because we love to produce order."
"My work is a game, a very serious game."
"He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder."
"What I give form to in daylight is only one per cent of what I have seen in darkness."
"Science and art sometimes can touch one another, like two pieces of the jigsaw puzzle which is our human life, and that contact may be made across the boderline between the two respective domains."
"Order is a repetition of units. Chaos is multiplicity without rhythm."
"Hands, are the most honest part of the human body, they cannot lie as laughing eyes and the mouth can."
"It is human nature to want to exchange ideas, and I believe that, at bottom, every artist wants no more than to tell the world what he has to say."
Maurits Escher was known to be a heavy smoker.
Physical Characteristics: Escher was left-handed.
Quotes from others about the person
Henry Allen: "Escher is for people who savor the infinities implied by master craftsmanship and enjoy spending an hour or so in the pristine gloaming and mathematical mortalities and mischief of Planet Thought."
Escher met his future wife, Giulia "Jetta" Umiker, in 1923 while touring Italy. He married her in Viareggio in 1924. The couple had three sons, Giorgio Arnaldo Escher, Arthur Escher, and Jan Escher.
