09/29/2019
Мауриц Корнелиус Эшер - гениальный художник , его можно назвать "серым кардиналом" изобразительного искусства ХХ века.
The Dutch artist Maurits C. Escher (1898-1972) was many things in his lifetime -- a draftsman, book illustrator, tapestry designer, and muralist -- but it was his oft-reproduced lithographs and etchings that earned him his lasting worldwide reputation, and revealed a fascinating imaginative life that lurked beneath the surface of a seemingly uneventful and conventional exterior life.
Unlike that of his compatriot Van Gogh or Gauguin, Escher's biography is hardly one to inspire the novelist or filmmaker looking for material. Born in Leeuwarden, Holland, the son of a civil engineer, he spent most of his childhood in Arnhem, where he did so poorly in his early studies that he was sent off to a special school at the age of seven. He originally aspired to be an architect and enrolled in the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem. While studying there from 1919 to 1922, his emphasis shifted from architecture to drawing and printmaking upon the encouragement of his teacher Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita. In 1924 he married Jetta Umiker, and the couple settled in Rome to raise a family. They would remain there until 1935, when the normally apolitical Escher took umbrage at his son being forced to wear the Fascist Youth uniform in school, and subsequently re-located the family, first to Switzerland, then to Belgium. In 1941, with World War II under way and German troops occupying Brussels, Escher returned to Holland and settled in the small town of Baarn, where he lived (uneventfully) and worked (very productively) until shortly before his death in 1972.
The main subjects of Escher's early art are Rome and the Italian countryside. While living in Italy from 1922 to 1935, he spent the spring and summer months traveling throughout the country to make drawings. Later, in his studio in Rome, Escher developed these into prints. Whether depicting the winding roads of the Italian countryside, the dense architecture of small hillside towns, or details of massive buildings in Rome, Escher often created enigmatic spatial effects by combining various —- often conflicting —- vantage points, for instance, looking up and down at the same time. He frequently made such effects more dramatic through his treatment of light, using vivid contrasts of black and white.
This gallery is devoted to that early work. It contains 250 of the 300 extant works that Escher did from the time he first took up art in 1917 until he resettled permanently in the Netherlands in 1937, plus the set of Delft woodcuts from 1939 which are in the spirit of the earlier work. As is the MWW custom, the works are arranged in chronological order.
For the artist's better-known late works, see this companion MWW gallery:
* The Topsy-Turvy World of M.C. Escher