Mc Escher

II. MC Escher

Maurits Cornelius Escher (June 17, 1898 – March 27, 1972) is one of the world’s most famous graphic artists. He was born in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands. As a child MC Escher had many difficulties. He was placed in a school for children of special needs at the age of seven and he failed the second grade. In 1903, his family moved to Arnhem and there he study carpentry. From 1903 to 1918 Escher went to school and although he received low grades in the majority of his classes he excelled at all creative courses such as art and drawing. [M.C. Escher – Wikipedia]

After school he attended Harlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts in 1919. Due to his father’s wishes of hoping to combine his son’s skills as a drawer and experience basic carpentry Escher studied briefly to be an architect. After one week he informed his father he no longer wanted to be an Architect, after showing his drawing and linoleum cuts to his graphic arts teacher Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita. Mesquita persuaded Escher to switch his area of study to graphic and decorative arts. Had this time of his life gone different, who knows the buildings he would have designed with his artistic sense and determination for greatness that he would later display in his career, for that we will never know. But through studying decorative arts, he left school in 1922 gaining experience in drawing and woodcuts both of which he would become very well known for. [www.mcescher.com]

After his education, he did a lot of traveling where through Italy and Spain and also met and eventually married his wife Jetta Umiker. The two lived in Rome but Escher continued to travel for many more years. He gained inspiration from many of the sites he saw and would draw and sketch prints that he would make and perfect once he returned home.

Even before meeting with Coxeter, Escher had a very strong interest in many mathematical concepts and used the idea of tessellations in many of his...