Math in Art

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 the many web sites 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, Day and Night and Reptiles.

But he also made some wonderful, more realistic work during the time he lived and traveled in Italy. Castrovalva, for example, where Escher establishes his 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 piece Metamorphosis I and II.

Trying to assign “time periods” for Escher’s works has been difficult for most scholars due to the fact that in any given period a number of themes occupied Escher’s mind simultaneously. Moreover, each period had its time of predevelopment, and so did

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.

Escher has tried to represent the limitless and infinite in many of his prints. In the print Ascending and Descending, a lithograph made in 1960, we are confronted with a stairway that can be said to go upward, and downward, without getting any higher. If we study the print and follow the monks step by step, we shall discover that each pace takes a monk a step higher. And yet on completion of one circuit, we find ourselves back where we started; therefore in spite of all our ascent we are not a single inch higher.

During the years in Switzerland and throughout the World War II, 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.

After finishing school, he traveled extensively throughout Italy, where he met his wife Jetta Umiker, whom he married in 1924. They settled in Rome, where they stayed until 1935. During these years, Escher would travel each year throughout Italy, drawing and sketching for the various prints he would make when he returned home.

Some topics in this essay:
Day Night, Ascending Descending, Division Plane, MC Escher, Jetta Umiker, II Trying, Left-leaners Right-leaners, Cornelis Escher, Samuel Jessurun, Arts Haarlem, mc escher, regular division, day night, millions people world, ascending descending, people world, woodcuts wood, millions people, wood engravings, throughout italy, woodcuts wood engravings, regular division plane, metamorphosis ii,