M. C. Escher

Master Tessellator

One such inspired visitor to the Alhambra was the Dutch graphic artist, M. C. Escher. He visited the Alhambra in 1936 and ever after devoted himself to the creation of perplexing and transformational tessellations. Escher confronts us with visual and mental paradoxes: two hands drawing each other, people physically adjacent of stairways, but never meeting because of the separate dimensionalities of their common environment; the infinitely looping Mobius strip, lizards leaving their tessellating surface and then crawling back in. Escher studies metamorphosis many times over: birds to fish to insects to blocks, triangles, clouds and water, day and night, black to white, etc.


All M. C. Escher works (c) Cordon Art B.V.-Baarn-the Netherlands. Used with permission.

Visit Escher on the web.

An Escher book for all ages:

The Pop-Up Book of M. C. Escher

Petaluma, CA: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1991

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