A planned series of lectures in North America in 1962 was cancelled after an illness, and he stopped creating artworks for a time, but the illustrations and text for the lectures were later published as part of the book Escher on Escher. The sometimes cloudy, cold, and wet weather of the Netherlands allowed him to focus intently on his work.Īfter 1953, Escher lectured widely. Most of Escher's best-known works date from this period. World War II forced them to move in January 1941, this time to Baarn, Netherlands, where Escher lived until 1970. In 1937, the family moved again, to Uccle (Ukkel), a suburb of Brussels, Belgium. These were for the 75th anniversary of the Universal Postal Union a different design was used by Surinam and the Netherlands Antilles for the same commemoration.Įscher, who had been very fond of and inspired by the landscapes in Italy, was decidedly unhappy in Switzerland. The Netherlands post office had Escher design a semi-postal stamp for the "Air Fund" in 1935, and again in 1949 he designed Netherlands stamps. When his eldest son, George, was forced at the age of nine to wear a Ballila uniform in school, the family left Italy and moved to Château-d'Œx, Switzerland, where they remained for two years. In 1935, the political climate in Italy (under Mussolini) became unacceptable to Escher. All the same, even his early work already shows his interest in the nature of space, the unusual, perspective, and multiple points of view. His art correspondingly changed sharply from being mainly observational, with a strong emphasis on the realistic details of things seen in nature and architecture, to being the product of his geometric analysis and his visual imagination. This turned out to be the last of his long study journeys after 1937, his artworks were created in his studio rather than in the field. He also studied the architecture of the Mezquita, the Moorish mosque of Cordoba. The sketches he made in the Alhambra formed a major source for his work from that time on. It remains an extremely absorbing activity, a real mania to which I have become addicted, and from which I sometimes find it hard to tear myself away. It was here that he became fascinated, to the point of obsession, with tessellation, explaining: In May and June 1936, Escher travelled back to Spain, revisiting the Alhambra and spending days at a time making detailed drawings of its mosaic patterns. The townscapes and landscapes of these places feature prominently in his artworks. He travelled frequently, visiting (among other places) Viterbo in 1926, the Abruzzi in 19, Corsica in 19, Calabria in 1930, the Amalfi coast in 19, and Gargano and Sicily in 19. While in Italy, Escher met Jetta Umiker – a Swiss woman, like himself attracted to Italy. The intricate decorative designs of the Alhambra, based on geometrical symmetries featuring interlocking repetitive patterns in the coloured tiles or sculpted into the walls and ceilings, triggered his interest in the mathematics of tessellation and became a powerful influence on his work.Įscher returned to Italy and lived in Rome from 1923 to 1935. He was impressed by the Italian countryside and, in Granada, by the Moorish architecture of the fourteenth-century Alhambra. In the same year, he traveled through Spain, visiting Madrid, Toledo, and Granada. In 1922, an important year of his life, Escher traveled through Italy, visiting Florence, San Gimignano, Volterra, Siena, and Ravello. He made sketches of this and other Alhambra patterns in 1936. Moorish tessellations including this one at the Alhambra inspired Escher's work with tilings of the plane.
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