I chose Maurits Cornelis Escher (M.C. Escher for short) for my Illustrator presentation. He was a famous dutch illustrator that was known very well for his drawing and printmaking, some of which were "mathematically inspired" and consisted of woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints, and he was most well known for his print and engraving style that distinctively played with orientation and space. He was born on June 17, 1898 to an engineer and the daughter of a government minister, and graduated from the School of Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem in 1922.
His first graphic work that was completed was a linoleum cut in purple of his father in 1916 as shown here.
From this point, he had many works published, displayed, and illustrated. His art career really kicked off, however, when, after graduating from school he traveled to Italy and met his wife Jetta Umiker, marrying her shortly after in 1924, and they settled in Rome until 1935. This entire 11 year timespan consisted of him travelling throughout Italy each year, drawing and sketching for the various prints he would make when he returned home. In addition to Italy he also travelled to places like Spain, drawing inspiration from nature and using mathematical objects in his work, along with many reused things from nature, like lichens, insects and entire landscapes, as well as doing sketches of local architecture and entire cityscapes . It was during his trip to Spain in 1936 that he made a pivotal turn in his work where he moved from landscapes to "mental imagery", the graphic works and tilings otherwise known as "dividing the plane". He had this to say on the subject:
"The regular division of the plane into congruent figures evoking an association in the observer with a familiar natural object is one of these hobbies or problems...I have embarked on this geometric problem again and again over the years, trying to throw light on different aspects each time. I cannot imagine what my life would be like if this problem had never occurred to me; one might say that I am head over heels in love with it, and I still don't know why."
All of this was still fairly early on in his career, and all of them were things he was recognized for later on by scientists and mathematicians alike, and in popular culture where his works have been used on many book and album covers and was even asked for permission from Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones to use one of his pieces on the cover of their album "Through the Past Darkly", which he refused. He was even a major inspiration for a book seven years after his death on the 27th of March, 1972 at the age of 73.
Here are some of his most famous works.
Still Life And Street
This is a woodcut print first printed in 1937, and was his first print of an impossible reality. Here there are two quite distinctly recognizable realities bound together in a natural, and yet at the same time a completely impossible, way.
Relativity
This was a lithograph print first printed in 1953. This particular piece was influenced by his miserable memories of one of the most unhappy periods of his life in 1903 at the secondary school in the city of Arnhem, where his family had moved.
Ascending and Descending
This is a lithograph print first printed in 1960. It was influenced by, and is an artistic implementation of, the "Penrose stairs", an impossible object and a concept which Lionel Penrose had first published in the February 1958 issue of the British Journal of Psychology.
Waterfall
This piece is a lithograph print first printed in 1961, and is a further developed representation of the concept he introduced in his earlier "Ascending and Descending" piece.
