Artist Profile

My artist's full name is Maurits Cornelis Escher, but he is known as M.C. Escher. He was born on June17, 1898 in Leeuwarden, Netherlands. He died on March 27, 1972. His parents were George Arnold Escher and Sara Gleichman Escher. His father was a civil engineer while is mother didn't work, but stayed at home. Jan, Author and Giorgio Arnaldo are his 3 siblings. He went to a technical school and Haarlem School of Decorative Arts. He studied architecture and graphic art. His best and only friend was Bas Kist. They have been friends from the time they were kids to the time they died. In 1924 he got married to Jetta Umiker in Italy where they both decided to live. There were many major historical events that had happened in his time, but five of them were the Spanish American War, World War 1, World War 2, Utah became the 45th state in the US, and the Battle of Omdurman(England vs. Egypt). While the world had it problems, Escher had his own struggles like: translating his visions into graphic art, having only certain prints being considered valuable, and having all of his work cancelled at a museum. Some things that a lot of people didn't know about him was that he had died of cancer, and that he was left-handed like a lot of other famous artist. Most of his works were made of lithographs, woodcuts, wood encarvings, drawings, and sketches. He didn't associate with any art movements, because he said he didn't want to be a part of any movements. Escher is famous for all of his works like day and night, relativity, and drawing hands. Day and Night was made in 1938. The white birds merge with a daylight sky, while the black birds blend to create a night sky. Drawing hands was made in 1948. He actually used his own right hand as the model for both hands depicted in the picture.