Maurits Cornelis Escher is a Dutch artist whose skillful works make a grand impression on the mind and psyche of the viewer.
He was famous for creating prints with images of unusual optical illusions, the so-called “impossible figures”, which cannot exist in the real world. Maurits Cornelis Escher at the initial stage of his creative career created works in a realistic style, including traditional portraits and landscapes. However, later he became interested in experiments with spherical mirrors and became one of the founders of a separate area of optical art called “imp-art”.
Biography
The future artist grew up in prosperity and luxury, his mother was the daughter of a minister. His family lived in the old mansion Princessehof, formerly owned by the royal family. Maurits was the youngest child of the Escher couple, besides him, his parents raised four more sons. The boy was in poor health, he was often sick and missed school. Knowledge was given to young Escher very hard.
Escher was accepted into the Haarlem architectural school, where, thanks to the art teacher Samuel de Mesquita, he became interested in graphics and created his first engravings.
After graduating from high school in 1922, Maurits went to Italy and fell in love with this warm southern country very much. Escher spent five months on the Apennine Peninsula, after which he boarded a steamer and left for Spain. After a short visit to his parents in Oosterbeek, he returned to Italy in the spring of 1923, where he lived for the next twelve years.
Engravings
The young artist settled in Rome, and every year he traveled around the country, bringing with him many sketches from his trips. Based on them, he created engravings, which, however, were not successful on the art market. In 1924, Maurits Cornelis Escher married the daughter of a wealthy Swiss industrialist, Jette Umiker, whom he had met on holiday in Ravanello the previous year. In marriage, he soon had two sons, but none of them inherited his father’s ability to art.
Fortunately, Asher’s wealthy parents and his wife supported their children financially over the years. Therefore, the artist never experienced financial difficulties, despite the obvious problems with the sale of his works. In 1935, he and his wife moved permanently to Switzerland, where he suddenly found that he was rather tired of traditional styles and genres of art. It was then that Maurits began to create drawings and engravings with unusual geometric shapes.
In the summer of 1937, the Eschers left Switzerland and settled in the suburbs of the Belgian capital, where the artist continued his creative experiments. And after the death of his father and mother, the master moved to his native Netherlands, which at that time were occupied by the Nazis.
Popularity
After surviving the war in the small town of Baarn, in the late 1940s, Maurits organized a large-scale exhibition of his own works in Rotterdam, where he presented numerous works in the style of imp art. The 50-year-old artist did not particularly count on commercial success, but suddenly became a real star of contemporary art. Enthusiastic articles appeared in the newspapers about an interesting author, he began to be invited to speak to students. And in the fall of 1950, the first personal exhibition of the master overseas took place in Washington.
Recognition in America was a turning point in the artist’s career, which rapidly began to gain momentum. His work gained immense popularity in Europe and the USA, the master’s works received many awards at prestigious exhibitions, and he himself was awarded a knighthood by the Queen of the Netherlands.
last years of life
At the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, the elderly artist lived in Canada for several years. Then he developed serious health problems and returned to his homeland.
By the end of the 1960s, Maurits’ wife, whose marriage had long been a formality, moved permanently to Switzerland. Although officially the couple did not divorce. Adult sons lived abroad, and the outstanding master was alone with his problems. Having survived several more operations, in the summer of 1970 the master moved to a nursing home, where he was guaranteed constant care. And on March 27, 1972, Maurits Cornelis Escher died at the age of 73 in the hospital ward of the hospital in the town of Hilversum from an incurable cancer.
