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.
On 31 January 1944 Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita was taken away by the Germans. He died in Auschwitz on 11 February. De Mesquita was Escher’s teacher, the man who would convince him to start a career in the graphic arts.
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.
Today is Poetry Day, the start of Poetry Week in the Netherlands. Escher was not a poet, but he had a poetic spirit. He must have had, to create this mind-boggling oeuvre. Moreover, his works lend themselves very well to being used as subject matter for poetry. To mark the occasion of Poetry Day, we are drawing attention to a special publication on Escher, the title page of which comes close to a poem. And if he was not a poet, then he was a troubadour.
Fishes and birds are Escher’s favorite animals. Or, at least, that is what his work seems to suggest. When he was experimenting with tessellations in the late 1930s, he arrived at these shapes quite soon. They lend themselves very well to the juggling act that is needed for this technique. Which is why they keep popping up in his work. Individually, like in Day and Night, Sun and Moon, Liberation, Fishes, Swans, Depth, Three Worlds and Whirlpools. In combination with other animals, but often also together. Consider in this regard Sky and Water I and II, Metamorphosis II, Predestination and Two Intersecting Planes.
Between 26 April and 28 June 1936 Escher takes a round trip by freighter along the shores of Italy and Spain. He also travels inland by train. His wife Jetta accompanies him on a section of this trip. The couple enjoyed themselves immensely. They had moved to Switzerland the year before and were missing Italy terribly. On 13 June Escher arrived in Livorno by freighter. Jetta had travelled back the day before.
From his travel journal:
'At 10.10 I journeyed to Pisa by train. From the Piazza Vittorio I took the trolleybus-cum-tram to the station, the same model as I saw running back and forth between Venice Mestre—a very pleasant and fast connection. In Pisa by 10.30 and then on to the Duomo by tram. From the first gallery of the Leaning Tower I did a drawing of the cathedral, on which I worked constantly until 3.30. At the station I ate something hurriedly and took the train back to Livorno at 4.18’
On 14 January 1898 Lewis Carroll, the British author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, died. Carroll passed away five months before Escher was born. Although their paths never crossed, the author and the artist have a lot in common. Both were frighteningly thin, both were addicted to long walks, both were obsessed by documenting the minutiae of their daily life, both were mad about chess and intrigued by game elements and by using these in their work.
The dazzling print Other World is one of Escher’s masterpieces. And rightly so. He created this combination of woodcut and wood engraving in January 1947. It is like looking through the windows of a brick room upon a crater-filled lunar surface. This is remarkable in itself, but what makes this print really impressive is that Escher combines three views (nadir, horizon and zenith) on this moon in one image.
The first post this year: a skull. Not the most obvious choice but for Escher it is not all that strange. He created several skulls and skeletons. Stand-alone works but also as part of a poster or a bookplate. This is the very first one, from January 1917. Maurits is 18 and fascinated by this symbol of mortality. In his youth in particular it kept him occupied, which is not that strange for a brooding adolescent.
We've reached the end of 2017. On Facebook and here, on Escher today, we brought you nearly 100 short stories and anecdotes about the life and work of M.C. Escher. All the images we used are collected in this video. We thank everyone for your attention this year and we will keep providing you with stories in 2018!
21 December, winter begins. Not Escher's favourite season, although during this time of the year he was most productive. He had no choice, there was nowhere else to go. For years he would travel during spring and summer and these trips would bring him inspiration for his prints. During autumn and winter, he would use his travel drawings and photo's for new woodcuts, wood engravings and lithographs. But the cold and snow that accompanied the winter months did not appeal to him much.