埃舍尔作品集

   摩里茨·科奈里斯·埃舍尔，1898年6月17日出生于荷兰北部的雷瓦登城。但他早年的岁月主要是在阿纳姆市渡过的。正是在那里读中学的时期，一位名叫海阿金的美术教师，指导他学习版画创作。中学毕业后，在父亲的建议下，埃舍尔赴哈勒姆学习建筑。对建筑的学习，不仅丰富了他的物理和数学知识，同时也奠定了他精严的描绘技能。

　　当然，埃舍尔的兴趣，仍然偏重于绘画。幸好，学院里的一位教授，荷兰有影响的艺术家萨缪尔·马斯奎塔发现了他的天才，并建议他改学版画。自1919 - 1922年，埃舍尔即在马斯奎塔的指导下攻研了各种材料的版画技巧。

　　青年的埃合尔是一位热爱大自然的艺术家。自1922年始，他多次旅行在意大利和西班牙之间，然后定居罗马，直到1935年。在这些年月里，他经常徒步旅行在南意大利的田野与山间。与此同时，古罗马的文化遗迹和中世纪基督教的艺术也给了他深刻的影响。

　　法西斯执政以后，埃合尔不愿居留意大利，1935年7月他移居瑞士。不过，1936年夏初，他又作了一次"研究性"的旅行，他搭乘货船，沿着意大利和西班牙的海岸进行考察。除去进行风景写生以外，他还特别到清真寺旦对摩尔人的嵌瓷图案作了详细的记录。1937年他曾移居比利时，而于1941年终于又回到荷兰故土。1972年3月27日埃合尔逝世于拉伦城。

　　After Escher had said goodbye to the south [in 1936], his work took a direction that was eventually to lead to his becoming famous. From now on he was no longer concerned with expressing his observations - or only rarely - but rather with the construction of the images in his own mind. These images dealt with the regular division of the plane, limitless space, rings and spirals in space, mirror images, inversion, polyhedrons, relativities, the conflict between the flat and the spatial, and impossible constructions. Even in his Haarlem period, and occasionally during his years in Italy, he had made hesitant moves in this direction, but only now did they take shape systematically and start to absorb him. He had the feeling that until then he had merely been doing finger exercises.
　　The laws that were to fascinate Escher most until his death were those of the regular division of the plane. He had experimented with them already in Haarlem. It was then, in October 1922, that he had visited the Alhambra for the first time. 'The fitting together of congruent figures whose shapes evoke in the observer an association with an object or a living creature intrigued me increasingly after that first Spanish visit in 1922, Escher wrote in 1941, in an article in De Delver, an art periodical. And although at the time I was mainly interested in free graphic art, I periodically returned to the mental gymnastics of my puzzles. In about 1924 1 first printed a piece of fabric with a wood block of a single animal motif which is repeated according to a particular system, always bearing in mind the principle that there may not be any "empty spaces".. . . I exhibited this piece of printed fabric together with my other work, but it was not successful. This is partly the reason why it was not until 1936, after I had visited the Alhambra a second time, that I spent a large part of my time puzzling with animal shapes.
　　Escher's development in this direction after 1936 can be attributed not only to this second visit to the Alhambra, but also to his departure from Italy. In 1959 he wrote about this (in the introduction to The Graphic Work): In Switzerland, Belgium and Holland where I successively established myself, I found the outward appearance of landscape and architecture less striking than those which are particularly to be seen in the southern part of Italy. Thus I felt compelled to withdraw from the more or less direct and true to life illustrating of my surroundings. No doubt this circumstance was in a high degree responsible for bringing my inner visions into being. In the same introduction, Escher wrote about his prints dating from after 1936 that they were created with a view to communicating a specific line of thought. The ideas that are basic to them often bear witness to my amazement and wonder at the laws of nature which operate in the world around us. He who wonders discovers that this is in itself a wonder. By keenly confronting the enigmas that surround us, and by considering and analyzing the observations that I had made, I ended up in the domain of mathematics. Although I am absolutely without training or knowledge in the exact sciences, I often seem to have more in common with mathematicians than with my fellow-artists.
　　From "M.C. Escher, His Life and Complete Graphic Work"