Escher in The Palace and Kunstmuseum Den Haag to celebrate Escher anniversary with four exhibitions

From optical illusions and impossible architecture to realistic natural landscapes: the work of Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) has it all. In 2023 it is 125 years since his birth. With the world’s largest museum collection of Escher’s work, Kunstmuseum Den Haag and Escher in The Palace are the focus of this special anniversary year.

Birds that become fish, water that flows uphill, two hands drawing each other: with consummate skill, M.C. Escher would transform a blank sheet of paper into his own infinite worlds where he would play with his viewers’ perception. His masterful metamorphoses and tessellations continue to amaze and inspire people all over the world. With four exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Den Haag and Escher in The Palace, plus a host of activities in the city organised in collaboration with cultural partners, schools, local communities and companies, in 2023 The Hague is truly the City of Escher. During the anniversary year a number of buildings in the centre of The Hague are ‘dressed’ in Escher style.

Exhibitions

Escher: Eternity and Infinity

Escher in The Palace – until 12 February 2023

Escher: Eternity and Infinity traces Escher’s development as an artist, from his early woodcuts of human subjects, the natural world and landscapes, to his revolutionary tessellations, metamorphoses, impossible buildings and optical illusions. The themes of eternity and infinity constantly recur in Escher’s work, and this exhibition highlights their key role in his entire oeuvre.

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Escher – Other World

Kunstmuseum Den Haag – 18 February to 10 September 2023

Step into the world of Escher – quite literally, at Kunstmuseum Den Haag’s Escher – Other World. This exhibition allows visitors to experience the work of Escher as never before. His famous prints, featuring optical illusions, impossible architecture, reflections and the natural world are combined with spectacular installations by Belgian artistic duo Gijs Van Vaerenbergh. The interaction between Escher’s prints and the spatial installations of Gijs Van Vaerenbergh offer visitors a unique experience and a deeper exploration of Escher’s work.

Escher’s prints are the result of his unprecedented talent, and also of his almost obsessive devotion to the art of printmaking. His work, like that of Gijs Van Vaerenbergh, explores the boundaries of space, landscape, perspective and illusion. While Escher explored on paper, Gijs Van Vaerenbergh do so in spatial installations. For this exhibition, the core element of which is a cross-section of the work of M.C. Escher, Gijs Van Vaerenbergh have devised space-filling interventions that present a contemporary view of Escher’s work. The interventions feature sculptural associations that explore the notions of light and heavy, temporary and eternal, impossible architecture and infinity, and other key elements of the work of Escher.

This double exhibition is divided into two sections representing day and night, a contrast that fascinated Escher. The first part of the show, DAY, arranged by theme, is displayed in our large, daylit galleries, where the work of Escher and the spatial installations of Gijs Van Vaerenbergh challenge and enhance each other. The second part, NIGHT, showcases a number of authentic themes in our side galleries. This unique interaction sheds new light on the beloved and versatile artist Maurits Cornelis Escher who, 125 years after his birth, continues to inspire people all over the world.

Gijs Van Vaerenbergh

The striking work of artistic duo Gijs Van Vaerenbergh straddles the boundary between art and architecture. Arnout Van Vaerenbergh and Pieterjan Gijs (both b. 1983, Louvain) met while studying architecture in Louvain, where they decided to combine their individual quests for a new perception of space. The idiosyncratic art of Gijs Van Vaerenbergh is in constant motion, changing from every perspective. What might appear from a distance to be a familiar structure, like a church, a windmill or a maze, turns out to consist of all kinds of small elements, with no permanent form, as the artists trick their viewers’ eyes and subvert their experience of their surroundings.

The Man Who Discovered Escher: Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita

Escher in The Palace – 18 February 2023 to 1 October 2023

Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita is known as the man who discovered Maurits Cornelis Escher. The talented artist and printmaker also taught graphic techniques at the School of Architecture and Decorative Arts. When Escher enrolled there as an architecture student, De Mesquita happened to see some of his graphic work. He was so impressed that he persuaded Escher to switch courses. Escher went on to become a master of printmaking, and the two developed a lifelong artistic and personal connection. Their artistic preferences partially coincided, but De Mesquita had his own very distinctive style, reducing his images of people and animals to the essence, and rendering his subjects in just a few powerful lines. In other images his style is less restrained. These imagined scenes are often humorous, though some are ominous. After De Mesquita’s death in Auschwitz in 1944, Escher continued to honour the memory of his teacher and friend. In this exhibition Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita’s poignant prints are shown alongside those of his most famous student.

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Just Like Escher

Escher in The Palace – 3 November 2023 to 24 March 2024

Impossible objects, masterful metamorphoses and absurd architecture: just a few of M.C. Escher’s favourite subjects, which still feature prominently in our culture today, and in contemporary art. In its major autumn exhibition Just Like Escher, Escher in The Palace will show how they are represented in today’s art. In their work, artists and designers like Damien Hirst, Iris van Herpen, Chris Ofili and Carlijn Kingma quiz each other and challenge the ideas of Escher.

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Escher and Kunstmuseum Den Haag

Kunstmuseum Den Haag is home to the largest museum collection of Escher’s work. This came about thanks to the connection the museum built with the artist after it hosted a major retrospective of his work in 1968: The Worlds of M.C. Escher. Escher himself was around to witness this first broad survey of his work, and he was delighted with the result. In response to The Worlds of M.C. Escher, J.L. Locher – then curator in the prints department, and later director of the museum – helped establish a foundation with the aim of creating an Escher collection for the Netherlands, which would be housed at Kunstmuseum Den Haag. After the artist’s death the museum eventually acquired a considerable proportion of his oeuvre.

Kunstmuseum Den Haag

Kunstmuseum Den Haag is one of the Netherlands’ leading museums of modern and contemporary art. With a collection encompassing visual art, decorative arts and fashion, and a focus on De Stijl, the Hague School, Delftware and German expressionism, Kunstmuseum Den Haag is a trendsetter in the national and international museum world. Alongside the work of Piet Mondrian, the work of M.C. Escher is a core element of the museum’s collection policy. The museum houses one of the largest Escher collections in public ownership, including almost all of his graphic work, a large collection of drawings and an extensive archive of letters, photographs and other personal documents that belonged to Escher.

Escher in The Palace

Escher in The Palace has been based at Lange Voorhout Palace in The Hague since 2002. The museum houses a permanent exhibit of Escher’s most famous work – some 120 items ¬– from Kunstmuseum Den Haag’s collection. The fabulous prints are displayed in a setting replete with royal grandeur: the former winter palace of Queen Emma, the Queen Mother. Before Lange Voorhout Palace was given over to the work of Escher, it had hosted several presentations of the collection between 1994 and 1996.

Collaboration

Kunstmuseum Den Haag and Escher in The Palace are two separate non-profit organisations which have close ties through the collection. The two organisations work together in all kinds of ways, from the administration and preservation of the collection and the dissemination of knowledge about Escher to the making of exhibitions.