Reader Question Victor Manuel, Manaus, AM
He was a Dutch graphic artist famous for his work with optical illusions. Despite being recognized for his originality and skill, he was seen by the artistic class as too intellectual and too poetic. Its critics were not very interested in its narrative themes and use of perspective – precisely the qualities that made it so popular. escher left a production of 448 lithographs and woodcuts and more than 2,000 drawings and sketches, in addition to having illustrated books, tapestries, stamps and murals.
Self-Portrait in Mirror Sphere (1935)
BAD ACCOUNT
Maurits Cornelis escher was born in 1898 in Leeuwarden, Holland, into a wealthy family. He was not an outstanding student: his grades were good in drawing but average in mathematics. When he decided to be an artist, he struggled to convince his parents, but he had the support of his teacher Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, an important Dutch artist. At the end, escher received help from the family
GEOMETRIC TRIP
In 1922, the artist traveled across the European continent. In Granada, Spain, he visited the palaces of the Alhambra, whose Moorish mosaics fascinated him. He copied the drawings and discovered the secrets of regular plane division, a mathematical concept that would inspire his career. From 1936 onwards, escher made other trips and studied symmetry and ordering
XILO WHAT?
The main techniques used by escher were woodcut and lithography. The first consists of creating embossed designs on a wooden block, on which paint is applied. In the second, a piece of flat stone is used, drawing on top
ACADEMIC MICO
HSM Coxeter, one of the popes of modern geometry, was enthralled by the drawings of escher, and invited him to participate in one of his classes. But he was disappointed: escher he was unable to follow the content presented, not even when the teacher discussed the theories that the artist applied, intuitively, in his own work
Like other famous artists, such as Michelangelo and Da Vinci, escher was left handed
art with math
Understand the main concepts of escher
PUZZLE
escher he wasn’t good at math, but the Arabs who decorated the Alhambra were. In the regular division of the plane, they used regular and congruent polygons such as triangles, squares and hexagons to make mosaics. In his tessellation works, escher started from geometric objects to create images that always have the same area, and therefore fit together perfectly, like fish or birds
drawing (1948) (Disclosure/reproduction)
SURREAL
escher created different levels of reality. The work drawing (1948) is perhaps the most emblematic: a three-dimensional hand seems to draw a two-dimensional wrist which, in turn, transforms into a three-dimensional hand and draws the wrist of the first. Another example is the work reptiles (1943)
Relativity (1953) (Disclosure/reproduction)
Waterfall (1961) (Disclosure/reproduction)
CRAZY
Perspective creates optical illusions through the design of objects or structures that are impossible to build materially. The artist also worked with multiple points of view, as in Relativity (1953). In Waterfall (1961), the water that moves the mill seems, paradoxically, to rise to fall again. The object that inspired escher is the Penrose Triangle, which appears to be a solid object, made of three interlocking bars, with a combination of properties that cannot be realized in real life
ANGELS AND DEMONS
By representing infinity in two-dimensional planes, escher applied concepts of hyperbolic geometry. Using the idea of the regular division of the plane imagined on a curved surface, the images repeat from the center and become smaller, proportionally, tending to infinity.
HIGH BLOCKS
Three-dimensional objects and regular polyhedrons appear frequently. Cube, cylinder, tetrahedron and polyhedron are common in the work of escher
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