In 1922, when Echer left the School of Architecture and Ornamental Design in Haarlem, having learnt graphic techniques from Jessurun de Mesquita, he was very much under the influence of this teacher, whose strong personality certainly left its mark on the majority of his pupils. At that period the woodcut was more in vogue with graphic artists than in the case today. Maurits inherited from his teacher his predilection for side-grained wood, and one of the reasons for my everlasting gratitude to him stems from the fact that he taught him how to handle this material. During the first 7 years of his time in Italy, Escher used nothing else.
In his youthful recklessness Maurits Cornelis has gouged away at enormous pieces of pearwood.
In his youthful recklessness Maurits Cornelis has gouged away at enormous pieces of pearwood.
It was not until 1929 that Escher made his first lithograph, and then in 1931 he tried his hand for the first time at wood-engraving, that is to say engraving with burin on an end-grain block.
The woodcut offers many advantages over wood-engraving. In making a colourprint Escher has often combined both of these raised relief techniques, using end-grain for details in black, and side-grain for colours.
From 1938 onwards, the artist concentrated more on the interpretations of personal ideas because of his departure from Italy. In Switzerland, Belgium and Holland, where Escher successively established himself, he found the outward appearance of landscape and architecture less striking than that which is particularly to be seen in the southern part of Italy.
No doubt this circumstance was to a high degree responsible for bringing his inner vision into being.
In 1946 when he first made the acquaintance of the old and highly respectable black art technique of the mezzotint, whose velvety dark grey and black shades so attracted him that he devoted a great deal of time to mastery of this copper-plate intaglio, a process that has today fallen almost entirely into disuse. It takes too much time and effort, in fact Escher has produced only seven mezzotints.
He deliberately left etching and copper-plate engraving to one side. The reason for this can probably be traced to the fact that he finds it preferable to delineate his figures by means of tone contrast rather than by linear contour. With intaglio one is much more tied to white as a starting point than in the case with raised relief and planography. The drawing of a narrow white line on a dark surface is practically impossible with intaglio, while a thin black line on a white background can be satisfactorily achieved in woodcuts and wood-engravings
By confronting the enigmas that surround us and analyzing, Escher ended up in the domain of mathematics more than in those of art
