ESCHER, M(AURITS) C(ORNELIUS)

born June 17, 1898, Leeuwarden, Neth. died March 27, 1972, Laren, Neth. Dutch graphic artist, known for his prints that use realistic detail to achieve bizarre optical and conceptual effects. Escher studied at the School of Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem. Growing interested in graphics, he spent a number of years traveling and sketching throughout Europe. His works from this period treated landscape and natural forms in a fantastic fashion using conflicting perspectives. Escher's mature style as a printmaker emerged after 1937 in a series of prints that combined a meticulous realism with paradoxical visual and perspective effects. He exercised great technical virtuosity to portray unexpected metamorphoses of mundane objects. His images were of equal interest to mathematicians, cognitive psychologists, and the general public, and were widely reproduced in the mid-20th century.