Escher
Maurits Cornelius Escher was born on June
17th, 1898 in Leeuwarden, Netherlands.
His father was a civil engineer.
Escher’s great skill for art and drawing was
realized at an early age. This
led his father to decide to send him to study at
the School of Architecture
and Decorative Arts in Haarlem. But, when he was 21
years old, Escher gave up
architecture to study in the field of graphic arts.
Escher spent most of
his life travelling in Europe looking for inspiration for
his works. In 1921
he got married and stayed in Rome. This is when his works of
art began to
show landscapes with impossible perspectives. In the 1930s, Fascism
in Italy
made life impossible for Escher and his family, so they moved
to
Switzerland. In 1936, Escher visited the Alhambra in Granada. The
Moorish tiling
he came across was amazing too him. Escher read and understood
Pólya’s paper
on the 17 planes of symmetry, even though he didn't understand
all of the ideas
in the paper. Between 1936 and 1942 Escher concentrated on
colored drawings
using all of the different symmetry types. He invented a
highly mathematical
system of study using a process which he invented
himself. In 1941, Escher went
home to the Netherlands. His popularity began
to grow, and in the 1950s,
articles on his work were written. His drawings of
symmetry began to be
displayed in science museums more than art galleries. In
his later years several
books were published about him. One of these books
described his works of art as
he neared death. "When Escher's view of the
world turned inward he produced
his best known puzzling prints, which, art
aside, were truly intellectually
playful, yet he was not. His life turned
inward, he cut himself off and he had
few friends. ... He died after a
protracted illness..." Escher died on March
27th, 1972, in the
Netherlands.