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Spring with Trees and Animals
21 March 2020

Spring with Trees and Animals

Spring is here. It cannot be stopped by the world's problems. That is why we show you this print. A small wood engraving of 44 x 99 mm, but large in visual richness. This woodcut of a tree with birds and a squirrel is special, because it mirrors the whole image. Because of that reflection, and Escher's play with shape and residual shape and the black and white contrast, the end result is both realistic and abstract. An ode to nature in these dark times.

M.C. Escher, Trees and Animals, wood engraving, 1953

M.C. Escher, Trees and Animals, wood engraving, 1953

Erik Kersten

Erik Kersten

Editor

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Piano di Sant'Andrea, Genoa

Piano di Sant'Andrea, Genoa

The Piano di Sant'Andrea is an historic site of ancient Genoa situated on top of a hill of the same name. The Piano is surrounded by the towers of the Porta Soprana. In the Middle Ages, this was the most important gateway to the city. At the foot of the towers lies the birthplace of Christopher Columbus. Escher visited Genoa and the Piano di Sant'Andrea in the spring of 1936, when he (partly together with his wife Jetta) made a voyage across the Mediterranean Sea, a journey that brought him considerable pleasure, but also much inspiration. He made photos and drawings that he then developed in wood or on stone in the autumn and winter of 1936/1937. This included woodcuts featuring Venice, Ancona, the tower of Pisa and the cargo ship on which they travelled, wood engravings on Catania and Marseille and a lithograph of Nunziata on Sicily. The journey was also a source of inspiration for one of his first optical illusions: Still life and street. In February 1937 he made this woodcut of the Piano di Sant'Andrea.
St Peter's from the Gianicolo

St Peter's from the Gianicolo

The Gianicolo (or Janiculum) towers above the city of Rome directly above the Trastevere district on the west side of the Tiber River. This hill offers fantastic views of the city and is a favourite destination for locals. That must have been the case for Escher as well, especially the park around the Villa Doria Pamphili. Here, in the largest public park in Rome, he was able to escape the noise and chaos of the city. It was less than a 30-minute walk from his home on Via Alessandro Poerio. He took pictures here and incorporated the view into his prints. One of them is St Peter's [seen] from the Gianicolo [Rome], from February 1935.

Development I

Development I

Development I and Development II are both prints in which Escher attempts to find a satisfactory way to express the concept of ‘infinity’. They show development, but are also part of a development. In October 1937, he showed his collection of tessellations to his brother Beer (Berend), a professor of geology, mineralogy, palaeontology and crystallography at Leiden University. Escher's collection consisted partly of copies of tessellations he had traced in the Alhambra (Granada) and La Mezquita (Cordoba) in the spring of 1936 and partly of ones he had drawn himself. He first started making tessellations some ten years earlier. In his early attempts, he carved an animal shape directly into the woodblock, after which he duplicated it on paper or fabric either mirrored or rotated.