M. C. Escher’s Day and Night

Maurits Cornelis Escher was born in 1898 into a prosperous family in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. He studied graphic arts in Haarlem and worked as a printmaker throughout his life, creating some of the most celebrated and enigmatic prints of the twentieth century. Following his training, he settled in Rome, started a family and began producing prints inspired by nature and the picturesque landscapes of southern Italy.

Escher and his family left Italy in 1935 due to the rise of fascism. This departure prompted the artist to shift focus away from the external world to his inner, imaginary world. He began using his refined skills to produce ingenious and complex optical illusions, tessellations and ‘impossible realities’. These were first only taken seriously by mathematicians and scientists, but by the late 1960s Escher’s work had become widely popular, particularly with the counterculture generation, who appreciated the mind-bending nature of his images.

In the 1960s Escher’s failing health and the rising popularity of his woodcuts (which he printed on demand) slowed the artist’s creation of new prints, although his late works are no less inventive or technically brilliant than his earlier work. Escher made his last print in 1969, a year after his first museum retrospective was held at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague. He died in 1972 at seventy-three years of age.