MC Escher
(17 June 1898 - 27 March 1972)) |
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printmaking Art Work
| Name: |
MC Escher |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Leeuwarden, Netherlands |
| Nationality: |
Dutch |
| Birth: |
17 June 1898 |
| Death: |
27 March 1972) |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
printmaking |
| Medium: |
woodcut, lithography, mezzotint |
| Method: |
woodcut, lithography, mezzotint |
| Style: |
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| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Printmaker
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Biography
Maurits Cornelis Escher was born on June 17th 1898 in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, M.C. Escher (1898-1972) produced work that remains among the most widely reproduced and popular graphic art of the twentieth century. His brain-teasing prints use interlocking shapes, transforming creatures, and impossible architectures to challenge the viewer's perceptions of reality. Expressing what he called a keen interest in the geometric laws contained by nature around us, his finely crafted compositions combine precise realism with fantastic explorations of pattern, perspective, and space.
Maurits Cornelis Escher (who called himself M.C.) was the youngest son of a hydraulic engineer but showed no early aptitude for mathematical concepts. After 5 years the family moved to Arnhem where Escher spent most of his youth. He was such a poor student, in fact, that he twice had to repeat a grade. 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.
Like some of his famous predecessors, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, M.C. Escher was left handed. Apart from being a graphic artist, M.C. Escher illustrated books, designed tapestries, postage stamps and murals. Escher's mind-bending prints and drawings playfully explore perspective, mirror images and physical space. Two of his best-known prints, "Relativity" (1953) and "Ascending and Descending" (1960), feature staircases which seem to defy gravity and run in impossible directions. His most popular work may be Hand With Reflecting Sphere (1935), an image of himself as seen in a globe held in his outstretched hand. Escher also is known for his tessellations mosaics of repetitive designs in which positive and negative images interconnect and sometimes blend into one another.
Though Escher was not trained in math, his work has been embraced by mathematicians who see his drawings as artistic depictions of geometric principles. 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. |
Samples of Work
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