The Amazing World of MC Escher

Stunning exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery looking at the life and work of Escher.

I had the image of Escher as a pop art/surrealist which I now realise was completely wrong. Instead I found a Northern European super realist in the tradition of Dutch Golden Age still lives.

I loved the attention to detail in these works and was surprised to find that most of the work was woodcuts not drawings. The precision needed to transfer the intricate pictures to an unforgiving print format is amazing. I was also interested to think about the influence of Durer.

I had also never seen any of his early work such as a lovely print of San Gimignano and some lovely self-portraits. From early on you could see him finding pattern in landscape. It was only when he left Italy and that landscape that he turned to his imagination for ideas.

I also loved the imaginative work being particularly struck by the transformative pieces where one repeated creature gradually becomes another one. A lot of the work questions the idea of image and what you see and how your eye normalised something which in theory doesn’t work.

Closes 17 January 2015.

Review
Evening Standard

 

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