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M.C. Escher Online

A Virtual Visit with the Celebrated 20th-Century Dutch Artist

A collection of links from the official M.C. Escher website, including online art galleries, artist interviews and quotes, multimedia resources, an online shop and more.

Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) may just be the most well-known artist around. There are probably many people who might not be able to tell you his name, but I’d bet that a large proportion of the world’s population would at least recognize the unique art of M.C. Escher.

Day and Night
Woodcut, 1938

One of the really nice things my parents did for us, as we grew up, was to introduce us to art, drama, music…all sorts of wonderful stuff. So consequently I came to know Escher’s work at a very early age, and have long enjoyed learning about more of his work.

You can imagine my delight, then, when I thought to check whether there was an “official” Escher website, and found that it did indeed exist!

Escher Is Everywhere

The official M.C. Escher web site is operated by the M.C. Escher Foundation and The M.C. Escher Company B.V., which is also the exclusive representative of the M.C. Escher Copyrights and, as such, controls all rights to the use and reproduction of Escher’s work. The company must have a very busy job — I can’t think of any artist whose work is more distributed across the world than Escher’s.

There are not only prints and posters, but books, mousepads, puzzles, mugs, playing cards, 3-dimensional models, tee shirts, videos, DVDs, ties, calendars, notecards, cigarette cases, address books, kaleidocycles, stickers, journals, giftwrap, screensavers, hand-carved reproductions of all types and more.

Anyway, the web site is not tremendously attractive — it is a ’90s-style framed site — but it is functional and, even more important, it contains all sorts of great resources related to Escher’s life and work.

The Official Site

• HOME Page
  
  • In addition to general site navigation, a nice plus (at least at the time of this writing) is a link that enables you to purchase a limited edition facsimile print of one of Escher’s great works.

• Biography
  
  • A brief, yet fascinating, account of Escher’s life, with emphasis on events that most affected his art.

• Quotes
  
  • 10 quotes revealing the man, his aspirations and his beliefs — my two favorites:
    
    • “I don’t grow up. In me is the small child of my early days.”
    • “So let us then try to climb the mountain, not by stepping on what is below us, but to pull us up at what is above us, for my part at the stars; amen.”

• Online Art Gallery
  
  • While not by any means complete — according to the site, Escher created nearly 2,500 lithographs, woodcuts, wood engravings, drawings and sketches — this online gallery contains scores of wonderful Escher works, divided into six main sections according to time period:
    
    • Early work   1916-1922
    • Italian Period   1922-1935
    • Switzerland and Belgium   1935-1941
    • Back in Holland   1941-1954
    • Recognition and Success   1955-1972
    • Symmetry   most of M.C. Eschers’ Symmetry Drawings

• Escher At Work
  
  • This section is very interesting. Below we have a video showing Escher producing his “Eye” mezzotint.
  
  

  Eye
  Mezzotint, 1946

  • There is also a 3-part interview in which Escher discusses his life and work:
  

• Downloads
  
  • Several short videos from a retrospective exhibition in the "Kunsthal" in Rotterdam that took place in 1998 allow viewers to take a “virtual ride” through some of Escher’s drawings.
  
  • There’s also a fun little puzzle you can download and fool around with to make impossible shapes like Escher did. The default state of the puzzle appears on the left of the vertical black line below, and to the right is one “impossible” shape I came up with.
  

This article has referred to many, but not all, of the available resources to be found at the official M.C. Escher web site. Visit the site, learn about this great artist, and enjoy his imaginative art.

There is also a Dutch-language version of the official M.C. Escher web site.

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