M. C. Escher
Maurits Cornelis Escher (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈmʌurɪt͡s kɔrˈneːlɪs ˈɛʃər]; 17 June 1898 – 27 March 1972) was a Dutch graphic artist who made woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints, many of which were inspired by mathematics. Despite wide popular interest, for most of his life Escher was neglected in the art world, even in his native Netherlands. He was 70 before a retrospective exhibition was held. In the late twentieth century, he became more widely appreciated, and in the twenty-first century he has been celebrated in exhibitions around the world.
M. C. Escher
27 March 1972 (aged 73)
Baarn, Netherlands
- Drawing
- printmaking
- Hand with Reflecting Sphere (1935)
- Relativity (1953)
- Waterfall (1961)
3
- George Arnold Escher (father)
Knight (1955) and Officer (1967) of the Order of Orange-Nassau
His work features mathematical objects and operations including impossible objects, explorations of infinity, reflection, symmetry, perspective, truncated and stellated polyhedra, hyperbolic geometry, and tessellations. Although Escher believed he had no mathematical ability, he interacted with the mathematicians George Pólya, Roger Penrose, and Donald Coxeter, and the crystallographer Friedrich Haag, and conducted his own research into tessellation.
Early in his career, he drew inspiration from nature, making studies of insects, landscapes, and plants such as lichens, all of which he used as details in his artworks. He traveled in Italy and Spain, sketching buildings, townscapes, architecture and the tilings of the Alhambra and the Mezquita of Cordoba, and became steadily more interested in their mathematical structure.
Escher's art became well known among scientists and mathematicians, and in popular culture, especially after it was featured by Martin Gardner in his April 1966 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. Apart from being used in a variety of technical papers, his work has appeared on the covers of many books and albums. He was one of the major inspirations for Douglas Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach.
Later life
In 1935, the political climate in Italy under Mussolini became unacceptable to Escher. He 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, but he was averse to fanaticism and hypocrisy. When his eldest son, George, was forced at the age of nine to wear a Ballila uniform in school, the family left Italy and moved to Château-d'Œx, Switzerland, where they remained for two years.[9]
The Netherlands post office had Escher design a semi-postal stamp for the "Air Fund" (Dutch: Het Nationaal Luchtvaartfonds) in 1935, and again in 1949 he designed Dutch stamps. These were for the 75th anniversary of the Universal Postal Union; a different design was used by Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles for the same commemoration.[10]
Escher, who had been very fond of and inspired by the landscapes in Italy, was decidedly unhappy in Switzerland. In 1937 the family moved again, to Uccle (Ukkel), a suburb of Brussels, Belgium.[1][2] World War II forced them to move in January 1941, this time to Baarn, Netherlands, where Escher lived until 1970.[1] Most of Escher's best-known works date from this period. The sometimes cloudy, cold, and wet weather of the Netherlands allowed him to focus intently on his work.[1] After 1953, Escher lectured widely. A planned series of lectures in North America in 1962 was cancelled after an illness, and he stopped creating artworks for a time,[1] but the illustrations and text for the lectures were later published as part of the book Escher on Escher.[11] He was awarded the Knighthood of the Order of Orange-Nassau in 1955;[1] in 1967 he was made an Officer.[12]
In July 1969 he finished his last work, a large woodcut with threefold rotational symmetry called Snakes,[c] in which snakes wind through a pattern of linked rings. These shrink to infinity toward both the center and the edge of a circle. It was exceptionally elaborate, being printed using three blocks, each rotated three times about the center of the image and precisely aligned to avoid gaps and overlaps, for a total of nine print operations for each finished print. The image encapsulates Escher's love of symmetry; of interlocking patterns; and, at the end of his life, of his approach to infinity.[13][14][15] The care that Escher took in creating and printing this woodcut can be seen in a video recording.[16]
Escher moved to the Rosa Spier Huis in Laren in 1970, an artists' retirement home in which he had his own studio. He died in a hospital in Hilversum on 27 March 1972, aged 73.[1][2] He is buried at the New Cemetery in Baarn.[17][18]
Forerunner of Escher's curved perspectives, geometries, and reflections: Parmigianino's Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror, 1524[21]
![Forerunner of Escher's curved perspectives, geometries, and reflections: Parmigianino's Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror, 1524[21]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ab/Parmigianino_Selfportrait.jpg/200px-Parmigianino_Selfportrait.jpg)
Forerunner of Escher's impossible perspectives: William Hogarth's Satire on False Perspective, 1753[21]
![Forerunner of Escher's impossible perspectives: William Hogarth's Satire on False Perspective, 1753[21]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/67/William_Hogarth_-_Absurd_perspectives.png/157px-William_Hogarth_-_Absurd_perspectives.png)
![Forerunner of Escher's fantastic endless stairs: Piranesi's Carceri Plate VII – The Drawbridge, 1745, reworked 1761[21]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/Giovanni_Battista_Piranesi_-_The_Drawbridge_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/146px-Giovanni_Battista_Piranesi_-_The_Drawbridge_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
