And all here at the Palazzo della Cultura - a renovated 15th Century palace - now a large cultural complex serving the people of Catania as well as us pesky tourists - in downtown city - just a brief walk from my apartment.
M.C.
Escher ( 1898 to 1972), was a graphic artist who made mathematically inspired
woodcuts ( carving into a block of wood
and making a print from that ), lithographs ( printing a picture from a flat, specially prepared stone ( or sheet of
zinc or aluminum ), and mezzotints (a
method of engraving on copper or steel by burnishing or scraping away a
uniformly roughened surface ) ..
His
work features mathematical objects and operations including “… impossible
objects, explorations of infinity, reflection, symmetry, perspective, truncated
and stellated figures having many dimensions, hyperbolic geometry, and
tessellations ...”.
The grand colonnade leaving into the museum
gives the visitor an idea of what lies ahead ...
Self Portrait - woodcut - 1930
The exhibition is huge - beautifully curated in several small galleries - with hundreds of Escher's printed works of all sizes from tiny "ex libris" cards to a large 3m long work ... All the works are framed behind glass - giving the photographer a challenge to avoid reflections - and all of the works are glorious in their tiniest detail. For the sake of giving you a close up of that detail, I have taken some out of their frames - something I don't like doing usually ...
Street in Scanno - lithograph - 1930
Cathedral in Atrani - lithograph -1931
Tropea, Calabria - lithograph - 1931
Rossano, Calabria - woodcut - 1931
Rocca, Calabria - lithograph - 1931
Morano, Calabria - woodcut - 1930
gallery ...
Monreale, Sicily - woodcut - 1932
Caltavuturo - lithograph - 1933
the principal of full and empty -
the idea behind much of his work ...
series of woodcuts - 1949 to 1963
Fish, Illustration - wood engraving - 1956
series of red woodcuts - 1957
Metamorphosis II - 3-colour woodcut - 3m long - 1939
Day and Night 1 - black & grey woodcut - 1938
Depth - coloured woodcut - 1959
printed from 3 blocks ...
Puddle - coloured woodcuts -1952
printed from 3 blocks
Hand with Reflecting Sphere - lithograph - 1935
Rind - coloured woodcut - 1955
printed from 2 blocks
Bond of Union - lithograph - 1955
Stars - woodcut - 1948
Up and Down - lithograph - 1947
gallery ...
Escher made many tiny woodcut greeting cards and
"ex libris" cards for friends and also commissions ...
gallery ...
The Bridge - Scolastica - woodcut - 1932
Second day of Creation - woodcut - 1925
gallery ...
Castrovalva - lithograph - 1930
gallery ...
Sky and Water II - woodcut - 1938
Sky and Water 1 - woodcut - 1938
And my exhibition favourite ...
glorious piece of art in its extraordinary detail ...
Three Worlds - lithograph - 1955
Mobius Strip II - coloured woodcut - 1963
... and finally, back out into the sunny Palazzo courtyard -
where even the 15thC architecture has an Escherian feel about it -
or is my brain playing tricks with my mind after a couple of hours
straining my eyes in the presence of the great master Escher ...
Time for caffeine me thinks ...
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