M.C. Escher is famous, world-famous!
Start of career
During the early part of his career, Escher had some exhibitions of his work, the first one in 1923 in Siena, Italy in the “Circolo Artistico Senese”. Later in the Hague, in art gallery “de Zonnebloem”, in Amsterdam, Leiden etc. During his lifetime, Escher had a total of 319 exhibitions of his work.
These were exhibitions of his early work, mostly his Italian prints. When Escher left Italy in 1936, the Italian landscape, his source of inspiration was lost and he had to turn to his inner-self.
Route to fame
In 1950, Escher together with nine other graphic artists, had an exhibition in Antwerp, Belgium. One of the visitors, the Belgian author and graphic artist Mark Severin was so impressed by Escher’s work, that he wrote an article in the English art magazine “The Studio”.
This article was read by an American journalist, who visited Escher in his studio in Baarn and in 1951 wrote two lengthy articles for both Time and Life magazine which were the start of Escher’s route to fame.
In 1954, the International Mathematical Congress was held in Amsterdam and on their initiative, Escher got a large exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum. This in turn led to his first major exhibition in the White Gallery in Washington D.C.
Millions of enthusiastic fans!
Since then his work has been seen by millions of people all over the world. There have been exhibitions in the USA, Canada, Japan, China, Australia, Russia, England, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Finland and Denmark, just to name a few. And of course, last but not least, the Netherlands!
The last years have seen an increasing number of visitors. In 2011 the Escher exhibition in Rio’s Centro Cultural Banco do Brazil was the world’s best visited art exhibition with 780.000 visitors in six weeks!
