Bookplate A.M.E. van Dishoeck

1941

Return to the Netherlands: Baarn

Because of the war the Eschers returned to the Netherlands in January 1941; from 20 February they lived in Baarn, and in 1955 moved to a new house in the same town. Most of Escher’s best-known works date from these years: the sometimes cloudy, cold and wet Dutch weather allowed him to focus intently on his work.

1 February 1944 – 1946

The death of his teacher Mesquita

On 1 February 1944 the Nazis arrested Samuel de Mesquita, who was of Jewish origin, with his family and sent them to Auschwitz; almost at once after arrival — presumably on 11 February — he and his wife were killed in the gas chamber. Escher helped to send his teacher’s works to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, keeping for himself a single sketch bearing the print of a German boot, and in 1946 organised a memorial exhibition there.

c. 1945

The end of the occupation: a diploma and an exhibition of the unyielding

Escher lived through the German occupation in the Netherlands. Before the end of the war he designed a diploma for the Temporary Academy in Eindhoven — an institution in the liberated south-east of the country — and immediately after the war he took part in an exhibition of artists who had refused to collaborate with the Nazi regime.