Last updated Regular Division of the Plane III, woodcut, 1957 - 1958.
Regular Division of the Plane is a series of drawings by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher which began in 1936. These images are based on the principle of tessellation, irregular shapes or combinations of shapes that interlock completely to cover a surface or plane.[1]
The inspiration for these works began in 1936 with a visit to the Alhambra, a fourteenth-century Moorish castle near Granada, Spain. Escher had visited the Alhambra once before in 1922 but in this visit he had spent several days studying and sketching the ornate tile designs there.[2]
In 1958 Escher published his book The Regular Division of the Plane. This book included several woodcut prints to demonstrate the concept, but the series of drawings continued until the late 1960s, ending at drawing #137. While not Escher's most artistically important works, some of these patterns are among Escher's most famous, having been used for a number of commercial products, including neckties.[1]
Maurits Cornelis Escher was a Dutch graphic artist who made woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints, many of which were inspired by mathematics. Despite wide popular interest, for most of his life Escher was neglected in the art world, even in his native Netherlands. He was 70 before a retrospective exhibition was held. In the late twentieth century, he became more widely appreciated, and in the twenty-first century he has been celebrated in exhibitions around the world.
A tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface, often a plane, using one or more geometric shapes, called tiles, with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety of geometries.
Castrovalva is a lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in February 1930. Like many of Escher's early works, it depicts a place that he visited on a tour of Italy.
Atrani, Coast of Amalfi is a lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in August 1931. Atrani is a small town and commune on the Amalfi Coast in the province of Salerno in the Campania region of south-western Italy. Atrani is the second smallest town in Italy and was built right at the edge of the sea. This image of Atrani recurs several times in Escher's work, most notably in his series of Metamorphosis prints: Metamorphosis I, II and III.
Still Life with Spherical Mirror is a lithography print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher first printed in November 1934. It depicts a setting with rounded bottle and a metal sculpture of a bird with a human face seated atop a newspaper and a book. The background is dark, but in the bottle can be seen the reflection of Escher's studio and Escher himself sketching the scene.
Hand with Reflecting Sphere, also known as Self-Portrait in Spherical Mirror, is a lithograph by Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in January 1935. The piece depicts a hand holding a reflective sphere. In the reflection, most of the room around Escher can be seen, and the hand holding the sphere is revealed to be Escher's.
Still Life and Street is an unusual woodcut print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher which was first printed in March, 1937. It was his first print of an impossible reality. In this artwork there are two distinctly recognizable realities bound together in a natural yet impossible way. Looked at from the window, the houses make book-rests between which tiny dolls are set up. Looked at from the street, the books stand yards high and a gigantic tobacco jar stands at the crossroads.
Metamorphosis I is a woodcut print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher which was first printed in May, 1937. This piece measures 19.5 cm × 90.8 cm and is printed on two sheets.
Metamorphosis II is a woodcut print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher. It was created between November, 1939 and March, 1940. The print measures 19.2 by 389.5 centimetres and was printed from 20 blocks on 3 combined sheets. Metamorphosis II is a long, horizontal piece which depicts animals and other forms gradually transforming into each other.
Magic Mirror is a lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher first printed in January, 1946.
Three Spheres II is a lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher first printed in April 1946.
Puddle is a woodcut print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in February 1952.
Convex and Concave is a lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in March 1955.
Metamorphosis III is a woodcut print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher created during 1967 and 1968. Measuring 19 cm × 680 cm, this is Escher's largest print. It was printed on thirty-three blocks on six combined sheets.
Stars is a wood engraving print created by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher in 1948, depicting two chameleons in a polyhedral cage floating through space.
Drawing Hands is a lithograph by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher first printed in January 1948. It depicts a sheet of paper, out of which two hands rise, in the paradoxical act of drawing one another into existence. This is one of the most obvious examples of Escher's common use of paradox.
Sky and Water I is a woodcut print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher first printed in June 1938. The basis of this print is a regular division of the plane consisting of birds and fish. Both prints have the horizontal series of these elements—fitting into each other like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle—in the middle, transitional portion of the prints. In this central layer the pictorial elements are equal: birds and fish are alternately foreground or background, depending on whether the eye concentrates on light or dark elements. The birds take on an increasing three-dimensionality in the upward direction, and the fish, in the downward direction. But as the fish progress upward and the birds downward they gradually lose their shapes to become a uniform background of sky and water, respectively.
In geometry, the binary tiling is a tiling of the hyperbolic plane, resembling a quadtree over the Poincaré half-plane model of the hyperbolic plane. It was first studied mathematically in 1974 by Károly Böröczky. However, a closely related tiling was used earlier in a 1957 print by M. C. Escher.
Symmetry aspects of M. C. Escher's periodic drawings is a book by crystallographer Caroline H. MacGillavry published for the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) by Oosthoek in 1965. The book analyzes the symmetry of M. C. Escher's colored periodic drawings using the international crystallographic notation.
M. C. Escher: Visions of Symmetry is a book by mathematician Doris Schattschneider published by W. H. Freeman in 1990. The book analyzes the symmetry of M. C. Escher's colored periodic drawings and explains the methods he used to construct his artworks. Escher made extensive use of two-color and multi-color symmetry in his periodic drawings. The book contains more than 350 illustrations, half of which were never previously published.
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