Castel Sant'Angelo

November 1923 – 1935

Rome and yearly journeys through Italy

From November 1923 Escher lived in Rome and until 1935 travelled each year for at least two months through Italy — Sicily, Abruzzo, Campania, and also Corsica, Malta and Tunisia; these journeys produced many landscapes whose perspective already hints at his later geometric experiments. He could not support his family on the sale of his work and lived on his father’s help.

1924–1935 · Workplace

Rome

1930–1933

Illness, the book “Emblemata” and a Rijksmuseum purchase

In late 1930 and in 1931 Escher’s health worsened and his work slowed; G. J. Hoogewerf, director of the Dutch historical institute in Rome, suggested he write to magazines about some of his works and publish a book — the selected works appeared in 1932 as “Emblemata”. In 1933 the print room of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam acquired twenty-six of his works.

4 July 1935 – August 1937

Leaving Fascist Italy: Château-d’Œx

On 4 July 1935 the Eschers left Italy: the political climate under Mussolini had become unacceptable to the artist, their nine-year-old son’s health had worsened and at school George was being made to wear the uniform of the Balilla organisation; they had to sell the house in Rome, and the family moved to Château-d’Œx in Switzerland. Life there was more expensive and they had to work hard: Jetta took up the piano again, Escher joined a chess club and tried landscapes, but was disappointed — they lacked the warmth of the Italian ones; in the summer of 1935 he went to The Hague to see his parents and drew one of his best-known portraits of his father.

1936

A voyage with the Adria line and a second Alhambra

In early 1936 Escher proposed to the Adria shipping company free passage in return for drawings of their ships and ports — to his surprise the company agreed — and from May, with Jetta, he sailed along the Italian coast and then to Spain, where he revisited the Alhambra and spent days at a time drawing its mosaic patterns in detail: tessellation then fascinated him to the point of obsession. The voyage, which ended with their return to Château-d’Œx by 1 September, was his last long study journey; he called it the richest source of inspiration he had ever tapped.