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The Magic Mirror of M.C. Escher

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The Magic Mirror of M.C. Escher ARTnewAPRILs 2004 The Magic Mirror of M.C. Escher PLUS: Picasso’s Heirs * Russia’s Amber Room * Western Art * The Lost Worlds of Dali The Magic Mirror M.C. Escher’s Mysterious Art, and mind brought us all on a mystical journey through depth, and deception. By Hugh Eakin aurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) is Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, as the fourth and one of the world's most famous graphic youngest son of a civil engineer. After 5 years artists. His art is enjoyed by millions of the family moved to Arnhem where Escher Mpeople all over the world, as can be seen on the spent most of his youth. After failing his high many web sites on the internet. school exams, Maurits ultimately was enrolled in the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts He is most famous for his so-called impossible in Haarlem. structures, such as Ascending and Descending, Relativity, his Transformation Prints, such as After only one week, he informed his father that Metamorphosis I, Metamorphosis II and he would rather study graphic art instead of Metamorphosis III, Sky & Water I or Reptiles. architecture, as he had shown his drawings and linoleum cuts to his graphic teacher But he also made some Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, wonderful, more realistic work who encouraged him to continue during the time he lived and with graphic arts. traveled in Italy. After finishing school, he traveled Castrovalva for example, where extensively through Italy, where one already can see Escher's he met his wife Jetta Umiker, fascination for high and low, whom he married in 1924. They close by and far away. The settled in Rome, where they lithograph Atrani, a small town stayed until 1935. During these on the Amalfi Coast was made 11 years, Escher would travel in 1931, but comes back for each year throughout Italy, example, in his masterpiece drawing and sketching for the Metamorphosis I and II. various prints he would make when he returned home. M.C. Escher, during his lifetime, made 448 lithographs, Many of these sketches he would later use for various other woodcuts and wood engravings Dragon, wood engraving, 1952 and over 2000 drawings and lithographs and/or woodcuts and sketches. Like some of his famous wood engravings, for example the background predecessors, - Michelangelo, Leonardo da in the lithograph Waterfall stems from his Italian Vinci, Dürer and Holbein-, M.C. Escher was left- period, or the trees reflecting in the woodcut handed. Puddle, which are the same trees Escher used in his woodcut "Pineta of Calvi", which he made Apart from being a graphic artist, M.C. Escher in 1932. illustrated books, designed tapestries, postage stamps and murals. He was born in ARTnews.com M.C. Escher became fascinated by the regular Division of the Plane, when he first visited the Alhambra, a fourteen century Moorish castle in Granada, Spain in 1922. During the years in Switzerland and throughout the Second World War, he vigorously pursued his hobby, by drawing 62 of the total of 137 Regular Division Drawings he would make in M.C. Escher working on mural for cemetery. his lifetime. Escher, who had been very fond of and inspired He would extend his passion for the Regular by the landscapes in Italy, was decidedly Division of the Plane, by using some of his unhappy in Switzerland, so in 1937, the family drawings as the basis for yet another hobby, moved again, to Ukkel, a small town near carving beech wood spheres. Brussels, Belgium. World War II forced them to move in January 1941, this time to Baarn, the He played with architecture, perspective and Netherlands, where Escher lived until 1970. impossible spaces. His art continues to amaze Most of Escher's better-known pictures date and wonder millions of people all over the world. from this period. The sometimes cloudy, cold, In his work we recognize his keen observation wet weather of the Netherlands allowed him to of the world around us and the expressions of focus intently on his works, and only during his own fantasies. M.C. Escher shows us that 1962, when he underwent surgery, was there a reality is wondrous, comprehensible time when no new images were created. and fascinating. Escher moved to the Rosa-Spier house in Laren In 1922, an important in 1970, a retirement home for artists where he year of his life, Escher had his own studio. He died at the home on 27 traveled through Italy March 1972, at 73 years of age. (Florence, San Gimignano, Volterra, Escher's first print of an impossible reality was Siena) and Spain Still Life and Street, 1937. His artistic (Madrid, Toledo, expression was created from images in his Granada). He was mind, rather than directly from observations and impressed by the Italian travels to other countries. Well known examples countryside and by the of his work also include Drawing Hands, a work Alhambra, a fourteenth-century Moorish castle in which two hands are shown, each drawing in Granada, Spain. He came back to Italy the other; Sky and Water, in which light plays on regularly in the following years. In Italy he met shadow to morph the water background behind Jetta Umiker, whom he married in 1924. The fish figures into bird figures on a sky young couple settled down in Rome and stayed background; Ascending and Descending, in there until 1935, when the political climate under which lines of people ascend and descend Mussolini became unbearable. Their son, stairs in an infinite loop, on a construction which Giorgio Arnaldo Escher, named after his is impossible to build and possible to draw only grandfather, was born in Rome. The family next by taking advantage of quirks of perception and moved to Château-d'Œx, Switzerland where perspective. they remained for two years. ARTnews.com Snakes, woodcut, 1969 He worked primarily in the media of lithographs his prints were mirror images of cones, spheres, and woodcuts, though the few mezzotints he cubes, rings and spirals. made are considered to be masterpieces of the technique. In his graphic art, he portrayed In addition to sketching landscape and nature in mathematical relationships among shapes, his early years, he also sketched insects, which figures and space. Additionally, he explored frequently appeared in his later work. His first interlocking figures using black and white to artistic work was completed in 1922, which enhance different dimensions. Integrated into featured eight human heads divided in different ARTnews.com Development II, woodcut, 1939 Depth, wood engraving, 1955 planes. Later around 1924, he lost interest in After his journey to the Alhambra, Escher tried "regular division" of planes, and turned to to improve upon the art works of the Moors sketching landscapes in Italy with irregular using geometric grids as the basis for his perspectives that are impossible in natural form. sketches, which he then overlaid with additional designs, mainly animals such as birds and lions. Although Escher did not have a mathematical training—his understanding of mathematics was His first study of mathematics, which would later largely visual and intuitive—Escher's work had a lead to its incorporation into his art works, strong mathematical component, and more than began with George Pólya's academic paper on a few of the worlds which he drew are built plane symmetry groups sent to him by his around impossible objects such as the Necker brother Berend. This paper inspired him to learn cube and the Penrose triangle. Many of the concept of the 17 wallpaper groups (plane Escher's works employed repeated tilings called symmetry groups). Utilizing this mathematical tessellations. Escher's artwork is especially well- concept, Escher created periodic tilings with 43 liked by mathematicians and scientists, who colored drawings of different types of symmetry. enjoy his use of polyhedra and geometric From this point on he developed a mathematical distortions. For example, in Gravity, multi- approach to expressions of symmetry in his art colored turtles poke their heads out of a works. Starting in 1937, he created woodcuts stellated dodecahedron. using the concept of the 17 plane symmetry groups. The mathematical influence in his work emerged around 1936, when he was journeying the In 1941, Escher wrote his first paper, now Mediterranean with the Adria Shipping publicly recognized, called Regular Division of Company. Specifically, he became interested in the Plane with Asymmetric Congruent Polygons, order and symmetry. Escher described his which detailed his mathematical approach to journey through the Mediterranean as "the artwork creation. richest source of inspiration I have ever tapped." ARTnews.com .
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