Esher

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, and can be seen on many web sites on the internet. He is most famous for his so-called impossible structures and realistic work during the time he lived and traveled in Italy. 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. 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.

Some quotes by M.C. Escher

  1. I believe that producing pictures, as I do, is almost solely a question of wanting so very much to do it well"
  2. I could fill an entire second life with working on my prints"
  3. To have peace with this peculiar life; to accept what we do not understand; to wait calmly for what awaits us, you have to be wiser than I am"
  4. At moments of great enthusiasm it seems to me that no one in the world has ever made something this beautiful and important"
  5. I am always wandering around in enigmas. There are young people who constantly come to tell me: you, too, are making Op Art. I haven't the slightest idea what that is, Op Art. I've been doing this work for thirty years now"
  6. I don't grow up. In me is the small child of my early days"
  7. I play a tiresome game"
  8. I walk around in mysteries. Each time, youngsters say: you make Op-art too. I don't know what that is, Op-art. This work I have been making for the past thirty years"
  9. The things I want to express are so beautiful and pure"
  10. So let us then try to climb the mountain, not by stepping on what is below us, but to pull us up at what is above us, for my part at the stars; amen"