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M.C. Escher and his Work The Dutch artist Maurits C. Escher (1898-1972) was a draftsman, book illustrator, tapestry designer, and muralist, but his primary work was as a printmaker. Born in Leeuwarden, Holland, the son of a civil engineer, Escher spent most of his childhood in Arnhem. His father instilled in him a lifelong interest in mathematics and science. Aspiring to be an architect, Escher enrolled in the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem. While studying there from 1919 to 1922, his emphasis shifted from architecture to drawing and printmaking. On completing his studies, the young artist moved to Rome. He resided there until 1935, when growing political turmoil forced him to move first to Switzerland, then to Belgium. In 1941, with World War II under way and German troops occupying Brussels, Escher returned to Holland and settled in Baarn, where he lived and worked until shortly before his death. The main subjects of Escher's early art are Rome and the Italian landscape. After 1937 Escher turned from the observation of nature to the study of its underlying structure. In his images based on visual paradoxes and laws of symmetry, the worlds of fine art and science converge. Mathematicians and especially crystallographers - those scientists who study the forms and structure of crystals - have been intrigued by Escher's exploration of such problems as the division of the plane into regular interlocking patterns and the geometric construction of "impossible" structures. Although Escher's prints were widely admired during his lifetime, it was not until 1954 that he had his first American exhibition in a commercial gallery in Washington, D.C. Since 1964 the National Gallery of Art has formed the preeminent collection of Escher's art outside Holland through the generosity of many donors, including Cornelius Van S. Roosevelt and Lessing J. Rosenwald, both of whom knew Escher personally. This centennial tribute was selected entirely from the Gallery's collection of more than four hundred works by Escher: drawings, illustrated books, technical materials, and impressions of 330 of the artist's 450 prints. |
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