Artist Spotlight - Remembering MC Escher on his birthday June 17

Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) 
Escher initially pursed a career in architecture, but his passion for graphic arts soon changed his mind. He was taught the principles of graphic art by S. Jessurun De Mesquit in the Dutch town of Haarlem. He then started traveling, somewhat restlessly, throughout Southern Europe where he made sketches and studies the landscape.

After 1936, his realistic style and subject matter changed profoundly, when he drew the first of his famous "impossible realities", Fascinated by the majolica tiling in the Alhambra, he became obsessed by the ideas that form the basis of the regular division of the plane, such as the crystallographic principles of shifting, glide-reflection and rotation.

In his studies he reflected on his personal amazement and admiration for the patterns of which the space surrounding is formed. "The one who is amazed, should realize it is a miracle".

During the rest of his like, Escher devoted himself to graphic art and the incorporation of transcendental ideas, such as metamorphosis and infinity, within the world of mathematics.