Maurits Cornelis Escher - Famous Dutch Graphic Artist

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"Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs and check." - M.C. Escher

The Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher is one of the world's most famous, and can be regarded as the "Father" of modern tessellations. He was a draftsman, book illustrator, tapestry designer, muralist, but his primary work was as a printmaker. Escher, like most artists, found it difficult to exactly manifest a mental image into a visual one. From 1919 to 1922, he learned graphic art techniques from S. Jessurun de Mesquita at the School of Architecture and Ornamental Design in Haarlem, The Netherlands.
     During that time period woodcuts were contemporary, and Escher inherited this predilection from his teacher Mesquita. He used nothing else during his first seven years while living in Italy from 1922 to 1935. During that period of his life in 1929, Escher made his first self-portrait lithograph (displayed on the lithographs page), others were realistic landscapes. After that he moved to Switzerland and Belgium. Escher's mature style emerged after 1937 in a series of prints that combined meticulous realism with bizarre optical illusions. M.C. Escher's works appealed to the general public, mathematicians, cognitive psychologists, and were reproduced throughout the 20th century. His art continues to amaze and wonder millions of people around the world due to its freshness, fancifulness, and its depiction of reality as wondrous, comprehensible, and fascinating.