Maurits Cornelis EscherDutch, 1898–1972Print Gallery
Can I see it?
Not on view at present
Where is “Print Gallery” now? Collection: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Not on view at present. Checked September 29, 2026.
Chicago, United States
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
- Checked
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
Details
- Accession number
- 1987.199.2
In the catalog
Sources
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Image: Art Institute of Chicago — © the artist or rights holder
In the life of Maurits Cornelis Escher
The whole life1954
An exhibition for the Mathematical Congress
In 1954, for the International Congress of Mathematicians in Amsterdam, an exhibition of Escher’s work organised by N. G. de Bruijn opened at the Stedelijk Museum; Roger Penrose and H. S. M. Coxeter were deeply impressed by his intuitive grasp of mathematics. The exhibition took up so much time that in 1954 Escher made only two works.
27 April 1955
Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau
On 27 April 1955 Escher was made a Knight (fifth class) of the Order of Orange-Nassau; in 1967 Queen Juliana raised him to the rank of Officer.
1956–1960
The Penroses and “impossible figures”
“House of Stairs” (1951) attracted the interest of the mathematician Roger Penrose and his father, the biologist Lionel Penrose; in 1956 they published a paper on impossible objects and later sent Escher a copy. He replied, admiring their continuously rising flights of steps, and enclosed a print of “Ascending and Descending” (1960); he went on to use the Penrose triangle repeatedly, notably in “Waterfall” (1961).
1957–1959
Coxeter and “Circle Limit”
In 1957 the geometer Donald Coxeter, with Escher’s permission, used two of his drawings in a paper on crystal symmetry and sent him a copy; the figure of a hyperbolic tessellation, with tiles shrinking rapidly towards the edge of a circle, “gave him quite a shock” — here was a way to represent infinity on a plane. He called his experiments “Coxetering”; they gave the series of wood engravings “Circle Limit I–IV”, and in 1959 Coxeter concluded that they were accurate to the millimetre.
1958–1959
Books on tessellations and on his own graphic work
In 1958 came the book “Regelmatige vlakverdeling” (“Regular Division of the Plane”), on the systematic build-up of mathematical designs, and in 1959 “Grafiek en tekeningen” (“Graphics and Drawings”), in which Escher himself commented on 76 works. After reading it in 1959 Albert Flocon began a correspondence with the artist and wrote, with André Barre, the book “La Perspective curviligne”.
