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Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) is one of the world's most famous graphic
artists. His art is enjoyed by millions of people all over the world, as can be
seen on the many websites on the internet.
He is most famous for his so-called impossible structures, such as Ascending and Descending, Relativity, his Transformation Prints, such as Metamorphosis I, Metamorphosis II and Metamorphosis III, Sky & Water I or Reptiles.
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But he also made some wonderful, more realistic work during the time he lived and traveled in Italy.
Castrovalva for example, where one already can see Escher's fascination for high and low, close by and far away. The lithograph Atrani, a small town on the Amalfi Coast was made in 1931, but comes back for example, in his masterpiece Metamorphosis I and II.
M.C. Escher, during his lifetime, made 448 lithographs, woodcuts
and wood engravings and over 2000 drawings and sketches. Like some of his famous
predecessors, - Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer and Holbein-, M.C. Escher
was left-handed.
Apart from being a graphic artist, M.C. Escher illustrated books, designed
tapestries, postage stamps and murals. He was born in Leeuwarden, the
Netherlands, as the fourth and youngest son of a civil engineer. After 5 years
the family moved to Arnhem where Escher spent most of his youth. After failing
his high school exams, Maurits ultimately was enrolled in the School for
Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem.
After only one week, he informed his father that he would rather study graphic
art instead of architecture, as he had shown his drawings and linoleum cuts to
his graphic teacher Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, who encouraged him to continue
with graphic arts.
After finishing school, he traveled extensively through Italy, where he met his
wife Jetta Umiker, whom he married in 1924. They settled in Rome, where they
stayed until 1935. During these 11 years, Escher would travel each year
throughout Italy, drawing and sketching for the various prints he would make when he returned home.
Many of these sketches he would later use for various other lithographs and/or
woodcuts and wood engravings, for example the background in the lithograph
Waterfall stems from his Italian period, or the trees reflecting in the woodcut
Puddle, which are the same trees Escher used in his woodcut "Pineta of Calvi",
which he made in 1932.
M.C. Escher became fascinated by the regular Division of the Plane, when he first
visited the Alhambra, a fourteen century Moorish castle in Granada, Spain in 1922.
During the years in Switzerland and throughout the Second World War, he
vigorously pursued his hobby, by drawing 62 of the total of 137 Regular Division
Drawings he would make in his lifetime.
He would extend his passion for the Regular Division of the Plane, by using some
of his drawings as the basis for yet another hobby, carving beech wood spheres.
He played with architecture, perspective and impossible spaces. His art continues
to amaze and wonder millions of people all over the world. In his work we
recognize his keen observation of the world around us and the expressions of his
own fantasies. M.C. Escher shows us that reality is wondrous, comprehensible and
fascinating.
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