Here we tap into dates from M.C. Eschers life and work, jumping through time but always in the now. All year round you can enjoy background stories, anecdotes and trivia about this fascinating artist.
A special donation was recently made around a tile tableau by Escher with fish and birds for the Dirk Schäferstraat 59 in Amsterdam. The donation includes two never-before-seen drawings by M.C. Escher, an extensive correspondence between the people involved and family photos of the unveiling of the tile tableau.
Since the Just like Escher exhibition, the striking modular carpet from Studio Wae has been on display on the second floor. This floor covering lends a contemporary touch to Escher's legacy, above all doing so in a sustainable, circular way through the use of waste materials.
It was not just collectors and fans of M.C. Escher who acquired his work during his lifetime. Friends and family also owned prints by Escher, like this lithograph, Drawing Hands, from the estate of Antoinette Schottelius-De Ridder, better known as Tony de Ridder. Escher in The Palace recently received this work on long-term loan, and correspondence between Escher and De Ridder has, to our great delight, been donated to the museum.
Curator Judith Kadee and paper conservator Paul van der Zande did not know what they were in for, when they unframed the newly acquired White Cat by M.C. Escher. Are you curious about the story behind this extraordinary discovery? Read the Escher Today here.
The five Wadden Islands in the north of the Netherlands provide a home for locals but are also a popular holiday destination. Although part of the Netherlands, the islands feel like a foreign country, if only because of the ferry trip you have to make to reach them. Mainlanders flock to the area for the sea air or to soak up the island atmosphere. This attraction is not new: the area was already popular with holidaymakers when M.C. Escher was a boy.
Last summer, Escher in The Palace received a special donation from Escher expert and mathematician Doris Schattschneider. She donated a Koh-I-Noor tin by Verkade, inspired by the Koh-I-Noor, one of the world's most famous diamonds.
Every year is special at Escher in The Palace, but 2023 was truly one for the books. This year marked 125 years since M.C. Escher was born and that fact was celebrated far and wide. These days, we especially look back on all the wonderful exhibitions and events we had the pleasure of organising. The Escher jubilee year was celebrated with wonderful exhibitions at our museum and also at Kunstmuseum Den Haag. Fortunately, the final exhibition Just Like Escher can still be seen until the 24th of March 2024. The anniversary year was also celebrated with numerous activities in The Hague. In addition, we continued to post as many stories about Escher's life and art as possible. All the wonderful images we shared this year can be found in this special end-of-year animation. We thank everyone for their support over the past year and hope to inspire you again in 2024 with our stories and images!
Inspiration can be taken not only from a direct mentor (who is essential for each and every art student) but also from masters from past eras. Escher, for instance, learned not only from his teacher Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita but also from looking to the past. In turn, De Mesquita drew on work by an old master too. Looking to precedents produced by artists from before one’s time is extremely common. Working in the style of or imitating well-known pictures is one way for artists to draw on the techniques and ideas of their heroes and to challenge themselves by looking at art from another person’s perspective
Flat surfaces were tremendously important to M.C. Escher. A two-dimensional blank sheet of paper gave him the opportunity to explore the infinite and to conjure illusions. On such sheets he would create deceptive three-dimensional worlds in which order and chaos are in conflict, just like in the real world. But despite order frequently losing out to chaos in the real world, Escher turned this on its head.
The period between 1934 and 1936 is widely recognised as a time of great transition in the artistic oeuvre of M.C. Escher. Gradually shifting his focus away from interpretations of Italian landscapes, Escher began to look for something new to incorporate into his work. This quest resulted in an approach that would become one of his best-known specialisms: merging worlds that did not, or simply could not, co-exist and bringing them together in a single image. The extreme perspectives on display in Still Life with Spherical Mirror – in which Escher depicts a reflection of himself and his environment – marked the artist’s first foray into this style. The pieces Still Life with Mirror and Still Life and Street are two other early examples of Escher’s merging worlds. Later, this desire to reflect impossible realities would lead to prints such as Other World, Double Planetoid, Gravity, Relativity, Print Gallery, Belvedere and Waterfall. Escher took an intriguing detour from this path with Dream (Mantis Religiosa), which depicts an impossible scene that is explicitly labelled by Escher himself as a dream.