MC Escher (1898-1972)

Not all famous artists are painters or sculptors. M.C. (Maurits Cornelius) Escher was a graphic artist whose illustrations have influenced many artists around the world, including filmmakers and writers. During his life, he produced over 2000 drawings and sketches, as well as almost 500 lithographs, woodcuts and wood engravings. He also illustrated book covers and designed everything from postage stamps to murals.

Escher was born in Holland on June 17, 1898. After failing his high school examinations, he eventually enrolled in the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem, but after a week, his teacher agreed that he would be better doing graphic arts. After school he traveled throughout Italy and Spain with friends, got married in 1924, and moved to Rome where he and his wife lived until 1935. During his travels in Spain he was fascinated by the geometry of Moorish art he saw at the Alhambra Palace in Granada.

In the early 1930s, he had health problems but managed to continue working and the family moved to Switzerland in 1935. Up to this point, his illustrations had been very stylized but were still easily recognized as real places. In 1936, after a cruise through the Mediterranean, Escher produced his first print of an "impossible reality" taken from his imagination. He returned to Spain to visit the Alhambra, the beautiful 13th century Moorish palace in Granada, so that he could study the tiles there.

In 1951, Escher's work was the subject of interviews in both Time and Life magazines, bringing him to the attention of a new audience in America and in 1955 he was knighted by the Queen of Holland. He read about theoretical mathematics and filled his pictures with lines and shapes that moved in and out in strange and fascinating ways. "Although I am absolutely without training or knowledge in the exact sciences," he wrote, "I often seem to have more in common with mathematicians than with my fellow-artists." Day and Night, which shows black and white birds flying away from each other, is one of his most famous creations, as are Reptiles and House of Stairs. He was always fascinated by what he called "the mental gymnastics of my puzzles."

During a trip to North America in 1963, Escher required emergency surgery while in Toronto, Canada, after which he returned to Holland. Despite increasingly bad health and more surgery, he continued to work and write to his many friends until March 27, 1972 when he died.