by Gabe Amos

        Maurtis Escher was born in 1898 in Leeuwarden, Netherlands. His family was well educated, so expectations for Maurtis to excel in school fell far beyond his actual ability, especially in mathematics. He wasn't without creativity or ambition; he was merely an average student. But high marks from school art departments applauded young Escher's creativity, and encouraged him to experiment with his drawing and woodcuts.
In 1919, he failed several final exams. Therefore, he was not allowed to graduate, which seemed to dash his family's plans for him to become an architect. Fortunately, a loophole allowed him to attend Higher Technical School in Delft, where he also failed to graduate. This time, he actually felt his devotion to his woodcuts and sketches (and poor health as well) outweighed his family's desire for him to be an architect, so he opted to study graphic design at School for Architecture and Decorative Arts.
      At this point, Escher had no mathematical training whatsoever. A glimmer of mathematical insight appeared in his work Eight Heads in 1922, which was his first to explore plane division.  Later that year, he visited Spain and was astounded by the Moorish tilings in the Alhambra Palace and elsewhere. But trying to reproduce them was frustrating and unfulfilling; they took too long, and he never liked what he came up with. Most of his work was landscapes from unusual perspectives.
    Escher married in 1924 to his wife Jetta and they spent the better part of the next 10 years moving around Europe searching for inspiration. Finally, in 1936, he returned to Alhambra Palace in Spain, where he became consumed by regular plane division that had frustrated him 10 years earlier. Jetta and Maurtis would spend days sketching the tilings, many of

which would be inspiration for Escher's future works.
    In 1937, Escher's brother Berend, a geology professor, recognized the elements of crystallography in Escher's works. Berend referred Maurtis to a paper by Polya on Plane Symmetry Groups. Of course, having little background in abstract group theory, he was slightly lost. He did manage to teach himself how the plane symmetry groups work in relation to his works, and thus began to employ them into his sketches.
      He finished Regular Division of the Plane with Asymmetric Congruent Polygons in 1941. It was not officially published at the time, but was a tool for him in his sketches. That he managed to put it together, however, clearly showed he was conducting mathematical research. His categorization based on his research was years ahead of crystallography research at the time. He quickly became a respected research mathematician and was requested to give lectures the world over.
        Over the next 20 years, he published several papers on plane division, and continued to incorporate his new math knowledge into his works. He befriended several well-known mathematicians, including topologist Roger Penrose. Escher studied Penrose's works and incorporated into his artwork during the1950's and 1960's. Escher fell ill in 1964, which also was the beginning of his decline. He continued to produce his works through 1969. He died 3 years later at the age of 74 (if my math is correct).

Eight Heads

Next Page