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.
December 1938 is an ice-cold month in Brussels. A perfect setting for a little woodcut (18 x 14 cm) which Escher created shortly before for the Dutch critic and poet Jan Greshoff, who also lived in Brussels. For his 50th birthday on 15 December 1938, Greshoff’s friends offered him this woodcut, showing a wintry Brussels with his own house as a shiny beacon.
On 12 December 1934 the Dutch Historical Institute in Rome hosted the opening of an exhibition with paintings and drawings by Otto B. Kat (a personal friend of Maurits) and woodcuts and lithographs by M.C. Escher. Despite the rainy conditions, interest in the opening was huge. Fascism’s grip on Italian society was growing stronger by the day and this exhibition seemed to be used by many as counterbalance. World leaders as well as religious authorities were present, as were several directors of foreign institutions, museum directors, artists and critics.
On 8 December 1928 Arthur Eduard Escher was born, the second son of Maurits and Jetta. Arthur (named after Jetta’s father) was preceded by George in 1926 and followed by Jan in 1938. It was a complicated delivery and Jetta had to stay in hospital for several weeks. Just as he would do for Jan ten years later, Escher created a woodcut dedicated to the birth. He also made photos of the newborn and his brother.
Maurits, Jetta and their two sons spent July and August of 1934 in the artists’ village of Saint-Idesbald. The village is home to several museums, including that of the world-famous surrealist painter Paul Delvaux. Escher had rented a house there, together with his brother Eddy and sister-in-law Irma. During that holiday, Escher and Jetta visited Ghent, Bruges and Tournai. That same holiday Escher created a woodcut of the cathedrals of Ghent and Tournai.
Between 1948 and 1954 Escher created a series of planetoids and stars. These celestial bodies all appear to be set in the same science fiction world, a world that at first glance seems alien to the earthly, austere artist. The series began with the wood engraving Stars, which features two chameleons interlocked in a system of regular octahedrons.
This week we had a slight change in terms of the works being exhibited. Some were returned to the archive and were replaced by a series of other works by Escher. One of these is Grasshopper, a wood engraving from March 1935. In very fine detail Escher shows a specimen of this winged insect with its powerful hind legs, compound eyes, antennae and folded wings.
Studying concepts like eternity and infinity in his work was definitely an obsession for Escher. He explored countless ways of suggesting boundlessness within the limited frame of his woodblock or his lithography stone. One of the ways he approached this was playing with depth and perspective. By varying the thickness of lines, sizes of shapes and foreground versus background, he achieved this sense of infinite space in a number of works.
Although he was fascinated by the concept of the regular division of the plane even early on in his career, it was not until 1936 that Escher tackled it in earnest. A period ensued in which he performed countless experiments with ways of filling a plane with patterns of geometric shapes. He did this in the form of drawings which he did in a notebook with a view to mastering the research process.
On 16 November 1953 Escher gave a lecture to the Friends of the Stedelijk Museum in Alkmaar, on the occasion of an exhibition of his work. During those years Escher had frequent opportunities to exhibit in museums, art galleries and universities, often together with two or more fellow members of the Association of Dutch Graphic Artists. He would usually accompany these exhibitions with a lecture on his own work.
At the end of 1933, Escher started to explore the possibilities of applying his work to commercial assignments. The first attempt was a design for wrapping paper. He hoped to sell it to a number of large department stores: de Bijenkorf, Gerzon, Zingone and Korall. Using their logos as motifs, he created several patterns that could be printed on wrapping paper. He also experimented with the names by making them interlock in playful ways.