The Roman Years (1924–1935)

In 1924, one of the happiest and most productive periods of Maurits Cornelis Escher’s life began. He had just married Jetta Umiker, and together they decided to build their lives in the “Eternal City”: Rome. These eleven years form the heart of his early career. It is the time when he viewed the world not only as a tourist, but as an artist.

A New Beginning on a Hill in Rome

After their marriage in June 1924, Maurits and Jetta looked for a place to live. They found a beautiful house on Via Alessandro Poerio, on the hill of Monteverde Vecchio. The house had a large roof terrace with a spectacular view of the city of Rome and the surrounding mountains.
For Escher, this house was paradise. He set up a studio where he worked for hours on his woodblocks. In this early period in Rome, his work was primarily “graphic realist.” He drew what he saw: the churches, the statues, the narrow streets, and the pine trees of Rome. He was obsessed with the light of the evening and created many works set in the dark, experimenting with how moonlight fell on the buildings.
Because the house turned out to be too small after all, they moved again later, this time just a few houses down the same street.

The annual treks through Southern Italy

Although he lived in Rome, Escher found his greatest inspiration outside the city. Every spring, usually in the months of May and June, he packed his backpack and sketchbooks for a trek through the rugged regions of Italy. He often traveled with artist friends to places such as:

* The Abruzzo: A mountainous region where the villages cling to the rocks like nests.
* Calabria and Sicily: Where he drew the dramatic coastlines and the remains of Greek temples.
* The Amalfi Coast: With its steep steps and white houses hanging over the sea.

During these travels, Escher walked kilometers a day. He sketched everything he saw. In the winter, when he was back in his studio in Rome, he developed these sketches into the famous woodcuts and lithographs. In these works, you can see that he began to play with perspective. He drew villages from very high above or, conversely, from very low below, making the world begin to look almost unreal.

The growth of the family

Life in Rome was not just art; it was also family life. In 1926, their first son, George, was born. Two years later, in 1928, their second son, Arthur, followed.
Escher was an involved father, but he also needed silence and order to be able to work. Life in Rome in the 1920s was comfortable for the Escher family. All the parents were well-off to a certain extent and helped them financially, allowing Maurits to concentrate fully on his art without immediately worrying about the sale of his work. Technique and Perfection: Lithography
Although Escher began with woodcuts, he also discovered lithography (stone printing) in Rome. This is a technique in which one draws with greasy chalk on a special limestone. This allowed Escher to create much softer transitions and shades of gray than was possible with a woodcut.
His technique became phenomenal during these years. If you look at his work from 1930, such as the images of the village of Castrovalva, you see every blade of grass and every stone. He wanted to capture reality as precisely as possible, but in his own structured way.

The Rise of Fascism

While Escher was working on his art, the world around him changed. Benito Mussolini had been in power in Italy since 1922. At first, Escher did not notice much of this in his daily work, but in the early 1930s, the atmosphere became grimmer.
Rome was draped with fascist flags, and marching soldiers could be seen everywhere. For a man who loved peace, logic, and individual freedom, this was stifling. All of this also began to influence schools and education, and thus the children.

The Departure from the Eternal City (1935)

In 1935, they made the decision. The political situation and the increasing pressure from the regime meant that Escher no longer felt at home in his beloved Italy. Moreover, their son Arthur’s health was a concern; the hot summers in Rome were hard on him.
In July 1935, the family left Rome. They moved to Château-d’Œx in Switzerland. For Escher, this was an emotional farewell. He loved the Italian landscapes, the architecture, and the light. In Switzerland, he found the mountains and the snow “boring” and “too white.”

The Years of Change (1935–1941)

In 1935, Maurits Cornelis Escher made one of the most difficult decisions of his life. He left his beloved Rome, the city where he had lived and worked for eleven years. The reason was the rise of fascism under Mussolini, in which he did not want his children to grow up. The period that followed, in Switzerland and Belgium, was a time of great inner change for Escher. He exchanged drawing landscapes for drawing thoughts.

The “cold” years in Switzerland (1935–1937)

The Escher family — Maurits, his wife Jetta, and their two sons George and Arthur — moved to Château-d’Œx in the Swiss Alps in the summer of 1935. Although the landscape was beautiful, Maurits was utterly miserable there.

The longing for Italy

Escher loved the chaos, the history, and the warm colors of Italy. He found the Swiss mountains rather boring. He called the snow “too white” and the mountains “walls that blocked the view.” In Italy, he drew outdoors, but in Switzerland, he stayed inside. Because he found no inspiration outside, he was forced to look inside his own mind.

The first ‘impossible’ experiments

Precisely because he was bored, he began to play with geometry. He started thinking about how to confuse the viewer. A famous work from this period is Still Life with Mirror (1934/1935), in which the reflection on the table does not seem to quite match reality. The first steps towards his famous style were taken here, in the cold mountains.

The journey to Spain: The Second Spark (1936)

To escape the gloom of Switzerland, Maurits made a major journey by cargo ship along the Spanish coast in 1936 together with Jetta. This journey was crucial. He visited the Alhambra in Granada for the second time. During his first visit in 1922, he was already impressed by the Moorish mosaics, but this time he was obsessed. Together with Jetta, he spent days meticulously tracing the complex patterns on the walls. He discovered the system behind the patterns: how shapes can be repeated without gaps appearing. We call this tessellation.
When he returned to Switzerland, he knew what he had to do. He no longer wanted to create landscapes; he wanted to create patterns that flowed into one another. He began sketching his first “metamorphoses.”

Moving to Belgium: Uccle (1937–1941)

In 1937, the family decided that Switzerland was not the place for them. They moved to Uccle, a leafy suburb of Brussels in Belgium. This was a practical choice: it was closer to their family in the Netherlands and the language was easier for the children. There were also old friends from their time in Rome: Otto de Kat and J.A.N. Patijn.

In Uccle, Escher experienced a massive creative explosion. He now had a spacious studio and was fully focused on his new discoveries. During these years in Belgium, he created a number of his most iconic early works:

* Air and Water I (1938): In this work, birds flying in the air slowly transform into fish swimming in the water. It is a perfect example of what he had learned at the Alhambra, but applied to living figures.

* Day and Night (1938): A landscape with white and black birds flying in opposite directions over a Dutch polder landscape

* Metamorphosis II (1939-1940): A gigantic work nearly four meters long in which forms continuously transform into one another: from a chessboard to lizards, to bees, to fish, and back again.

The Second World War and the unrest

While Escher was working, the Second World War broke out in 1939. The fear of fascism that Escher had felt in Italy was now back in his own backyard.

Life in Uccle became difficult. There was little food and the German occupiers were present everywhere. Moreover, his father, George Arnold Escher, died in 1939. This was a heavy blow for Maurits, as his father had always been his greatest support, both mentally and financially.

Escher no longer felt comfortable in Belgium, and it was decided to return to the Netherlands. Escher was also a Dutch citizen, which made finances easier. Furthermore, his good friends Otto de Kat and his wife had already left for the Netherlands as well.

A few weeks after the German invasion, Mrs. Escher passed away. Around that time, postal and train traffic between the Netherlands and Brussels was impossible, so the news reached him late. He hitchhiked to the Netherlands but arrived too late for the funeral.

Back to the Netherlands (1941)

In February 1941, the family left Belgium and moved to Baarn in the Netherlands. This marked the end of his “years abroad.” Escher would live in Baarn for the rest of his life.