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Valentine's Day 2018
14 February 2018

Valentine's Day 2018

These photos from Maurits’s private album exude happiness. He and Jetta got to know each other in the spring of 1923. They met in a guest house in Ravenna and their love grew over the next few months.

Plans to marry were soon forged, though this was mostly due to their parents. The pair would have rather had some more time to discover the world without this kind of baggage. When Jetta moved to Rome with her parents in November 1923, Maurits went with them: he couldn't be without her. This series was made on 27 January 1924 in (what was probably) the house of the Umiker family on Via Nicotera in Rome. The sheets hanging out to dry form an improvised background for the lovers and the glances they exchanged.

Erik Kersten

Erik Kersten

Editor

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More Escher today

Infinity in a puddle

Infinity in a puddle

In the years after the war Escher used to take walks after supper in the woods surrounding his house in Baarn. He spent many hours there, both to clear his head but also to fill it with new ideas for graphic work. From 1951 onwards he started to write them down in his diary. One of these notes from that year goes like this:
'Traces of car and bicycle tires, perspectively seen, diagonally; Sloping recess filled with water: puddle. In it, the moon is reflected.'
He would go on to develop this idea into the woodcut Puddle, from February 1952. He subsequently described this print as follows:
'The cloudless evening sky is reflected in a puddle which a recent shower has left in a woodland path. The tracks of two motor cars, two bicycles and two pedestrians are impressed in the boggy ground.'
Saint Vincent, martyr

Saint Vincent, martyr

You have just a few more weeks to see some remarkable wood engravings and woodcuts by Escher up close in The Palace. On 12 March they will be returned to the archive to be replaced by new graphic treasures. Earlier we discussed Grasshopper, Tournai Cathedral and Scarabs. Today we will focus on St. Vincent, martyr.
Scarabs

Scarabs

You have just a few more weeks to see some remarkable wood engravings and woodcuts by Escher up close in The Palace. On 28 February they will be returned to the archive to be replaced by new graphic treasures. Earlier we discussed the wood engraving Grasshopper and the woodcut Tournai Cathedral. Today we will focus on Scarabs, a wood engraving from April 1935.