“…with my prints, I try to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world and not in a formless chaos, as it sometimes seems.
My subjects are also often playful: I can't help but joke with our irrefutable certainties. For example, it is very pleasant to skilfully mix two-dimensionality with three-dimensionality, the flat surface with space, and have fun with gravity… It is pleasant to observe that many people seem to like this kind of playfulness, without fear of changing their opinion on solid realities such as rocks.”
And so here are the first researches witnessed by works such as Ex libris (1922), Scarabei (1935); the graphics inspired by the Italian landscapes Tropea, Santa Severina (1931) where Escher structures the space; Metamorphosis II (1940) one of the longest four-color woodcuts ever made to tell a story through images, in which one scene leads to the next through a subtle and gradual mutation of forms; the impossible figures of Up and Down (1947) and Belvedere (1958); the extraordinary dynamic tensions between figure and background in sheets such as Pesce (1963).
Alongside his famous engravings – on display absolute masterpieces such as Three Spheres I (1945), Drawing Hands (1948), Relativity (1953), Convex and Concave (1955), Möbius Strip II (1963) – numerous drawings will also be presented , documents, films and interviews with the artist which aim to underline the leading role that he has played in the historical and artistic panorama of both his time and later.
A section of the exhibition will be dedicated to comparing Escher's production with works by other important authors - inspirers, contemporaries and successors - to understand how Escher's choices are in consonance with an artistic vision that spans the centuries, with a greater or lesser awareness which, at times, responds to different needs, but which starts from the Middle Ages, intersects Dürer, the dilated spaces of Piranesi, passes through the harmonious lines of Liberty (Viennese Secession, Koloman Moser) and focuses on the avant-gardes of Cubism, Futurism and the Surrealism (Dali, Balla).
If the greatness of an artist is also measured by the ability to influence other artists, as well as the surrounding society, Escher was a supreme artist. His art has come out of the press of his studio to be transformed into gift boxes, stamps, greeting cards; it entered the world of comics and ended up on the covers of long-playing records, as the 33rpm records recorded by the greats of pop music were called at the time. It's not enough, though. Escher's great art had a more or less direct influence on other important figures of XNUMXth century art, such as Victor Vasarely, the leading exponent of Optical Art, Lucio Saffaro, etc. He owed a creative debt to Maurits Escher, even an American painter like the disruptive Keith Haring. The section illustrates these aspects of Escher's art with a wealth of materials and about twenty works to give the visitor the right cultural dimension covered by the Dutch artist.
The exhibition is also conceived as a tool and an "educational machine" that allows you to enter "inside" the creativity of this very unique artist. Suggestive installations will therefore immerse the visitor in the magical way of Escher. The relationship that Escher had with "the world of numbers" is evident, and much investigated - meaning that of geometry (Euclidean and otherwise) and mathematics. No less intriguing is his research on real space and virtual space, or on how to "deceive perspective". Last but not least, Escher's knowledge of the laws of visual perception brought to light by Gestalt research.
All possible interpretations, certainly not the only ones, to understand the creative universe of a complex artist who, starting from those premises, drew heavily on various artistic languages, admirably merged together in a new and highly original path that still excites us and which constitutes a unicum in the panorama of the History of Art of all time.
To fully explore the author, the Palazzo Magnani Foundation in collaboration with the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia promotes a CYCLE OF GREAT CONFERENCES conducted by top-profile experts, together with the Curators, to the Scientific Committee of the exhibition.
Wednesday 30 October 2013 at 17.30 pm – Aula Magna
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Via Allegri 9 Reggio Emilia
“Escher up close. The man and the artist in the story of a passionate collector"
Speaker: Ing. Federico Giudiceandrea
Friday 8 November 2013 at 17.30 pm – Aula Magna
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Via Allegri 9 Reggio Emilia
"Escher: the two faces of genius, between mathematics and art history"
Conversation on the relationship between art and science.
Speakers: Piergiorgio Odifreddi (mathematical logician) and Marco Bussagli (art historian, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome)
Maurits Cornelis Escher. The life
He was born on June 17, 1898 in Leeuwarden but grew up in the city of Arnhem with four siblings. Mauk, as he was nicknamed, took carpentry lessons as a boy and although he was not particularly brilliant in mathematics and science, he assimilated the scientist's methodological approach from his engineer father. One of his favorite subjects was immediately drawing, which he devoted himself to while studying at the School of Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem. It was the meeting with de Mesquita that stimulated Escher's interest in the xylographic technique and his possible experiments in rendering highly refined chiaroscuro and pictorial effects. His visit to Florence dates back to 1922 (the first of a series of trips between Tuscany and southern Italy) and to Granada (where he visited the splendid Alhambra palace) from which he captured architectural, decorative and unusual details that would provide him ideas for his compositions. In 1935 he moved to Switzerland. It is from 1937 that a profound change is observed: he loses interest in the visible world, in nature and architecture, focusing on his own "inner visions" and creating a significant corpus of extraordinary optical games, inverted perspectives, landscapes most famous illusionists. He moved to Holland in 1941 with his whole family and continued to work intensely merging the multiple sources of inspiration that he drew from his interests (psychology, mathematics, poetry, science fiction). He died in Laren in 1972.
The exhibition promoted and organized by the Palazzo Magnani Foundation of Reggio Emilia is curated by an exceptional scientific committee coordinated by Piergiorgio Odifreddi - internationally renowned mathematical logician -, and composed of Marco Bussagli - essayist, art historian, professor of band at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome -, by Federico Giudiceandrea – collector and scholar of Escher – and by Luigi Grasselli – full professor of Geometry and pro-rector of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia.
Info: Reggio Emilia, Palazzo Magnani - dto 19 October 2013 to 23 February 2014
