M.C. Escher
1898–1972 · Dutch
About M.C. Escher
M.C. Escher (Maurits Cornelis Escher, 1898–1972) was a Dutch printmaker born in Leeuwarden. He entered the architecture department of Haarlem’s School of Architecture and Decorative Arts in 1919, then transferred to graphic arts after Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita recognized his ability. Escher spent much of the 1920s and early 1930s in Italy, making woodcuts and lithographs from landscape and architecture.
A 1936 return to the Alhambra and the Mezquita renewed Escher’s study of repeating geometric patterns. Tessellation, reflection, recursion, and conflicting systems of perspective subsequently became central to his work. He worked in woodcut, wood engraving, linocut, lithography, etching, and mezzotint, and printed his own woodcuts. His first major retrospective opened at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague in 1968.
Available works
Information
M.C. Escher (Maurits Cornelis Escher, 1898–1972) was a Dutch printmaker born in Leeuwarden. He entered the architecture department of Haarlem’s School of Architecture and Decorative Arts in 1919, then transferred to graphic arts after Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita recognized his ability. Escher spent much of the 1920s and early 1930s in Italy, making woodcuts and lithographs from landscape and architecture.
A 1936 return to the Alhambra and the Mezquita renewed Escher’s study of repeating geometric patterns. Tessellation, reflection, recursion, and conflicting systems of perspective subsequently became central to his work. He worked in woodcut, wood engraving, linocut, lithography, etching, and mezzotint, and printed his own woodcuts. His first major retrospective opened at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague in 1968.