Escher..
Ever since i was old enough to enjoy art, i remember first seeing M.C. Escher’s fantastical worlds, shapes in tessellation and much more.. beautifully hand drawn works that occupied me for hours, in looking at the various skills that had been utilised and exploring visually, the scenes set before one.. Mauritus Cornelis Escher, born 1898, was a Dutch graphic artist, and used mathematical inspiration for a lot of his works, using regular patterns of division, or featuring impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture and tessellations. He explored mathematical relationships among shapes figures and space. He liked to sketch landscapes and nature, also insects (which appeared frequently in his work) using his sketches as a point of inspiration.
Escher created many works involving stairways, like this above..
I have since discovered another artist whose work is very similar, in that they appear feasible, but would be impossible to physically construct.. his name is Oscar Reutersvard, born 1915, a Swedish graphic artist who had a fascination for ‘impossible figures’ which confuse the brains intuitive knowledge of physical laws, in much the same way as Eschers work, in fact some of their work could easily be attributed to either artist but for its heritage being documented. I think both artists have made a ‘particular genre’ of work, with their specific fascination in their subjects..
Reutersvard created many impossible forms, like this one above..
A retrospective of M C Escher’s work is on display as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival, in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, until the 27th of September 2015. The display will then travel to London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery in October…
