Tower of Babel

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 · Luogo di lavoro

Rome

1926

The birth of his son George

In July 1926 Escher and Jetta had a son, George, in Rome; King Victor Emmanuel III and Benito Mussolini attended the child’s christening. A second son, Arthur, was born in 1928.

1929

Five exhibitions in Holland and Switzerland

By the late 1920s Escher had become known in the Netherlands — not least through the efforts of his parents, who had moved to The Hague; in 1929 he held five exhibitions in Holland and Switzerland that were well received even in the most influential Dutch newspapers. It was then that his pictures were first called mechanical and “logical”.

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.