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Day and Night, 1938 by M.C. Escher. Collection Gemeentemuseum Den Haag

© 2015 The M.C. Escher Company. All rights reserved. www.mcescher.com

ESCHER: IMAGINING A WORLD OF CONNECTION The Dutch ar tist M. C. Escher died in 1972 aged 73. Initially hailed by mathematicians in the 1950s, during the turbulent era of the 1960s Escher’s studiedly playful, subtly subversive imagined worlds were often appropriated by the counterculture of the day, reproduced on LP covers and in magazine ar ticles, becoming a favourite of Resurgence editors.

Now a major new exhibition reminds us of other aspects of this singular ar tist’s work – interrelationships in the natural world. In his early twenties, Escher was fascinated by the repetitive patterns of Islamic tile work in the Alhambra palace in Granada. By the late 1930s, his absorption with such geometric patterns was finding expression in representations of the environment, such as this work, Day and Night (1938). A flock of white birds flies into the night while – heading in the opposite direction – a flight of black birds flies into the light. It is, Escher suggests, a world of equal and opposite; of connections. The exhibition, The Amazing World of M.C. Escher runs until 27 September at the Scottish National Galler y of Modern Art, Edinburgh; and then at the Dulwich Picture Galler y, London, from 14 October until 17 Januar y 2016.

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