Baarn, War and Breakthrough (1941–1959)

Moving to Baarn

The Second World War and the German occupation of the Netherlands and Belgium made a return to the Netherlands necessary. In Baarn, the family rented part of a house on Nicolaas Beetslaan. Escher set up his studio in the back of the garage, where he worked almost daily.

The move to Baarn marked an important new phase for Escher. The sunny Italian landscape, which had inspired him for years, gave way to the Dutch surroundings. His attention shifted increasingly from landscapes to subjects stemming from his own imagination. He was particularly occupied with filling a flat surface with repeating figures. He created patterns in which, for example, fish, birds, reptiles, and other animals gradually merged into one another. He had already delved into this before his move; in Baarn, he continued this development intensively. In the summer of 1941, he created ten new tessellations.

Work during the war

The war had a major influence on his life and work. In November 1941, the Dutch Cultural Chamber was established and artists were required to be members in order to exhibit or publish publicly. Escher refused to apply, as membership meant formally submitting to the cultural policies of the German occupier. His refusal made it more difficult to officially distribute his work.  Nevertheless, he continued to draw and experiment, particularly with tessellations.

A significant event during this period was the death of Escher’s former teacher, Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita. De Mesquita, a Jewish artist whom Escher had trained, was deported by the occupier in January 1944 and was later killed in Auschwitz. Escher only learned about their fate when he tried to visit in February. He ensured that a portion of De Mesquita’s graphic work and drawings was saved.

Despite the difficult circumstances, Escher developed an increasingly personal style in the 1940s. His work was no longer solely about beautiful landscapes or decorative patterns. He began to increasingly play with the contrast between two- and three-dimensionality, movement, perspective, and the question of what is truly possible in an image. In 1943, for example, he created Reptiles, in which a two-dimensional tessellation transforms into a three-dimensional scene. In 1944, Meeting followed, in which he once again combined various spatial realities.

Freedom to show his work

After the war, Escher had more opportunity to develop his own ideas. In 1946, he was introduced to the mezzotint, a graphic technique that allowed him to create particularly fine lines, shadows, and details. An example of this is Dewdrop from 1948. At the same time, he continued to work on his tessellations and optical experiments. His interest in mathematical patterns grew, although he did not consider himself a mathematician. He independently discovered how symmetry and repetition could be used to suggest endless patterns.

Interest from across the ocean

In these years, Escher was far from being a world-famous artist. He had indeed had exhibitions and his prints were admired by a limited group, but there was hardly any question of major commercial fame. That began to change around 1950. That year, Escher exhibited in Antwerp alongside nine other graphic artists. The Belgian artist and writer Mark Severin was impressed by his work and wrote about it in the British art magazine The Studio. That article proved to be of great significance.

An American journalist read the article and decided to visit Escher in his studio in Baarn. Subsequently, in 1951, articles about Escher appeared in The Studio, Time, and Life. The American publications, in particular, led to a sharp increase in interest in his work in the United States. With that, Escher’s international breakthrough began. His fame would grow rapidly in the following years, but in 1951, he was still at the beginning of that development.

The sudden interest also had a downside. Escher made his woodcuts and lithographs largely himself and therefore had to personally produce the large numbers of prints that American enthusiasts wanted to buy. His print *Day and Night* from 1938 became particularly popular. He would eventually reprint this print hundreds of times. Although he was pleased with the interest, printing it took up a great deal of his time, which he preferred to spend creating new work. Escher eventually tried to raise his prices to limit demand, but that had little effect. His work remained popular.

Meanwhile, Baarn remained an important source of inspiration. Almost every evening after dinner, Escher took walks through the Baarn and Vuursche woods. He called these walks his ‘little winding strolls’. During these excursions, he observed trees, roads, puddles, shadows, and reflections. From 1951 onwards, he began writing down ideas for new prints in his diary. One of these ideas grew into Mud Puddle, a color woodcut from February 1952. In it, he combined a simple puddle of mud with the reflection of the night sky and the trees surrounding the puddle. An everyday scene was thus transformed into an almost infinite world of reflections and patterns.

In the years that followed, Escher focused increasingly on the possibilities and impossibilities of space. He explored how a flat plane could give the impression of a three-dimensional world and how perspective could mislead the viewer. In July 1953, he created Relativity, one of his most famous works. In this print, various directions of gravity exist side by side. Figures move through stairs and corridors, but what is a floor to one figure is a wall to another.

Growing popularity and return to travel

An important moment came in 1954. In September, a major exhibition of Escher’s work was organized at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam during the International Mathematical Congress. As a result, many mathematicians and scientists came into contact with his work. Furthermore, Escher had an exhibition at the Whyte Gallery in Washington in October and November. In America, his work sold well, and an ever-growing group of collectors emerged.

In 1955, Escher moved within Baarn to a new house on the Van Heemstralaan. He had a home built there with space to work. That year was particularly productive. Among other works, he created Three Worlds, in which a pond, trees, and fish are connected in a unique way. His interest in reflections and different realities was once again strongly evident in this work. He was also appointed Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau on April 30, 1955. The distinction was unexpectedly presented to him in his studio by representatives of the municipality of Baarn.

In 1956, another significant development occurred. Escher began an intensive correspondence with Bruno Ernst, a Dutch mathematics teacher who was very interested in his work. The conversations and letters between the two concerned, among other things, Escher’s ideas about space, infinity, and tessellations. The contact would ultimately last for many years and later lead to a book about Escher. His travels also became more important during this period. From 1954, Escher resumed his annual journeys across the Mediterranean. He had always missed the Italian landscape and found inspiration anew during these trips. Nevertheless, Baarn remained his permanent home and workplace. The woods and landscape around his house provided ideas for new prints, while his studio remained the place where he developed those ideas.

Regular Division of the plane

In 1958 his book Regular Division was published. Also in 1958, he created Belvedere, a print in which an apparently logical building ultimately proves to be impossible. Moreover, in that same year, his ideas acquired an interesting connection with mathematics. The British mathematician Roger Penrose and his father Lionel Penrose published an article on impossible objects in 1958. Their ideas would later form an important source of inspiration for Escher’s work.

Circle Limit

Escher’s relationship with scientists and mathematicians became an important part of his later career. He corresponded with people who recognized mathematical ideas in his work, including the mathematician H. S. M. Coxeter. Coxeter’s work on geometry and infinity helped Escher explore ways of representing endless patterns within a finite image. Escher’s Circle Limit works are particularly important examples of this interest. Instead of allowing shapes simply to repeat at the same size, Escher designed a pattern in which the forms become progressively smaller toward the edges. This interest in infinity and repetition would remain one of the defining characteristics of his late work.

The period 1951–1959 was thus decisive for Escher’s development. His international breakthrough began in 1951, particularly in the United States. In the years that followed, he grew into an artist admired not only by the general public but also by mathematicians and scientists. At the same time, he continued to work relatively quietly and independently in Baarn. The woods, his studio, and his daily surroundings formed a stable foundation for his ongoing experiments with perspective, symmetry, infinity, and optical illusions. By the end of the 1950s, Escher was no longer a little-known graphic artist but an internationally respected artist with a visual language entirely his own.

The Final Years (1960–1972)

At the beginning of the 1960s, Escher was already an experienced artist in his early sixties. His artistic interests had changed considerably since the landscapes of Italy that had dominated his earlier career. He was increasingly fascinated by mathematical patterns, tessellations, impossible structures, infinity, and the transformation of one form into another. Rather than simply drawing what he saw, Escher tried to represent ideas that seemed impossible to visualize. His work often made ordinary rules of perspective appear unreliable.

The year 1960 was particularly significant. In March, Escher completed Ascending and Descending, one of his most famous lithographs. The print shows figures endlessly walking up and down a staircase arranged in an impossible architectural structure. The staircase appears logical at first glance, but closer examination reveals that it cannot exist in the real world. Escher’s achievement was not merely to create an impossible object but to make it look convincing. Every architectural detail, figure, shadow, and perspective line contributes to the illusion. He also finishes his Circle Limits series with Circle Limit IV, Heaven and Hell, also known as Angels and Devils.

Escher’s fascination with impossible architecture was closely connected with his interest in mathematics and scientific ideas. Although he was not formally trained as a mathematician and often described himself as someone who worked visually rather than through mathematical formulas, mathematicians increasingly admired his work. One important influence was the British mathematician Roger Penrose. Penrose had developed the concept of the “impossible triangle,” an object that appears three-dimensional but cannot exist in ordinary physical space.

In 1961, Escher completed Waterfall, a lithograph that became one of his best-known images. Water appears to travel along a channel, apparently flowing uphill before falling over the edge and returning to the same system. The structure creates the illusion of a perpetual machine: the water seems to descend endlessly while somehow returning to its original starting point. The work demonstrates Escher’s extraordinary ability to combine mathematical principles with artistic imagination.

In 1963, Escher produced Möbius Strip II, continuing his exploration of mathematical structures. The following year he created Square Limit, another important work based on the systematic division of the plane and a variation of the Circle Limit series.

Escher’s creative output continued through the middle of the decade. In 1965 he produced Knots, a woodcut demonstrating his interest in three-dimensional forms, mathematical structure, and impossible or highly complicated objects. His work was increasingly concerned with questions such as how a flat surface could suggest depth, how a finite image could suggest infinity, and how a familiar object could be transformed into something logically impossible.

By the middle of the 1960s, Escher was internationally recognized, but his artistic success came relatively late in life. Unlike many famous artists, he had not belonged to a major artistic movement and had spent much of his career working independently. He was not a surrealist, even though some of his images had dreamlike qualities. Instead, Escher developed his own visual language, based on careful observation, mathematical structure, symmetry, transformation, and optical illusion. His work occupied a unique position between art and science.

From 1967 to 1968, Escher worked on Metamorphosis III, an enormous woodcut that was an extension of his earlier work Metamorphosis II. In his metamorphosis compositions, one recognizable form gradually changes into another: patterns become animals, animals become geometric shapes, and geometric shapes become architectural structures or landscapes. The viewer is invited to follow a continuous chain of transformation in which there is no simple boundary between one thing and another.

In 1968, Escher took an important step toward preserving his work by establishing the M.C. Escher Foundation himself. The foundation was created specifically to preserve and protect his artistic legacy. This decision was significant because Escher understood that his work had developed an importance beyond his own lifetime. Now he was also free to work on his art and health without the troubles of the business that is had become.

Last work

Escher’s final major work was Snakes, completed in July 1969. It was a remarkable conclusion to his artistic career. The woodcut contains interlocking snakes arranged around a circular pattern. As the snakes approach the center and the outer edge, they become progressively smaller, creating an extraordinary impression of infinity. The work demonstrates the technical precision that had characterized Escher’s art throughout his career, while also returning to his lifelong fascination with endlessness and transformation. The official catalogue lists Snakes as his final completed major print.

The year 1969 was also important because Escher became the subject of a film commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The film, made by Han van Gelder, showed Escher working and included images of his artistic process. It helped introduce his personality and methods to a wider audience. Among the material filmed was his work on his final woodcut, Snakes. The film was later recognized internationally and was nominated for an Academy Award in 1972.

Declining health

By the beginning of the 1970s, Escher’s health was declining more seriously and his living situation was getting difficult. A friend, Jobs Wertheim advised him of the newly founded Rosa Spier retirement home for artists. After his final trip to visit family in Canada he applied late 1969. He was able to move in around september 1970.

In the early months of 1971 there were clear signs of failing health as Escher is admitted in hospital. He recovers but in February 1972 he would be admitted again for, as it turns out, the last time.

In december 1971 he receives the first print of The Worlds of MC Escher :

The title is actually the only thing that makes me a bit angry; how could I ever have given my consent for such a pompous, pretentious name? Of course, “Andere Wereld” [Other World] appears on the cover—rendered in beautiful colors—and fortunately they printed “werelden” [worlds] with a lowercase ‘w’, but still…

Death

Escher died on 27 March 1972 at the age of 73. His death marked the end of a career that had transformed the possibilities of graphic art. He left behind more than 2,000 drawings and hundreds of prints, including woodcuts, wood engravings, lithographs, and other graphic works. His final creative period had established him not simply as a Dutch artist but as an international figure whose work crossed the boundaries between art, mathematics, science and architecture.

M. C. Escher’s death in 1972 did not end his influence. His work has continued to inspire mathematicians, architects, designers, filmmakers, and artists. His impossible staircases, endlessly transforming patterns, and paradoxical spaces have become recognizable symbols of the relationship between imagination and logic. Escher demonstrated that art does not have to choose between beauty and intellectual complexity. His pictures could be visually captivating while simultaneously asking profound questions about space, reality, perception, and infinity.

Sources :
* Wim Hazeu. (1998). M.C. Escher, Een biografie
* Schattschneider, Doris. (1990). Visions of Symmetry. W.H. Freeman & Co.
* Ernst, Bruno. (1976). De toverspiegel van M.C. Escher.
* Website Escher in Het Paleis.
* F.H. Bool, J.R. Kist, J.L. Locher, F. Wierda. (1982). MC Escher, His Life and Complete Graphic Work.