Fish in Baarn

In September 1941 Escher started on his woodcut Fish, the first work he produced after moving to Baarn. In his diary he wrote about the process:

Fish is a print consisting of two interwoven threads. Each of them has a series of fish swimming head to tail, which are mirror images of one another. One thread starts in the bottom right corner, zigzags in horizontal swings upwards and finishes in the top left corner. The other one starts bottom left and zigzags towards the upper right corner.

At the end of October, the print was purchased by Pulchri Studio in The Hague for its 'raffle fund'. With the support of its members, this fund purchased works of art created by artists who were members of Pulchri. The works were then raffled among the members. In this way, Pulchri was able to support its artist members and regular members had the opportunity to get hold of a legitimate work for free. During the draw on December 29, 1941, 54 works of art were raffled among the members. The winning lottery number for Fish (mistakenly referred to as lithograph in the newspaper article) was 1116.

Escher was pleased with the purchase, as evidenced by a letter he wrote to his good friend Hein 's-Gravezande on 1 November:

Despite being purchased by Pulchri and admired by De Mesquita and 's-Gravezande, Escher himself was not satisfied with Fish. He called it a ‘mosaic’—nothing more and nothing less. He only exhibited the print twice and he sold just a few of them*.