The Arlington Museum of Art announces its summer exhibition with over 150 pieces spanning the entire career of artist, printmaker, and graphic designer, M.C. Escher
Arlington, TX (February 27, 2025) – The Arlington Museum of Art is bringing the mind-bending work of M.C. Escher to Arlington for its summer exhibition. With over 150 works spanning the career of the graphic designer, M.C. Escher: Infinite Variations explores the metamorphic work of one of the most famous printmakers in modern times. The exhibition is open from April 26 – August 3, 2025 at the Arlington Museum of Art. M.C. Escher: Infinite Variations is a Single Source Traveling Exhibition provided by: PANART Connections.
“The Arlington Museum of Art strives to inspire conversations about the intersection of art and perception. M.C. Escher was a master of recognizing boundaries and pushing beyond them to create new realities,” says Arlington Museum of Art President & CEO Chris Hightower. “We hope our community discovers new ways to engage with Escher’s work through their own experiences while appreciating his illusory genius and beauty.”
Coming from the largest private traveling exhibition of Escher’s work in the world, this exhibition includes some of the artist’s finest works, starting with his early bookplates, to “landscapes, tessellations, and impossible worlds”, and concluding with his very last print, Snakes (1969). When experiencing this exhibition, visitors can expect to fully immerse themselves in the world and work of M.C. Escher through vibrant displays, interactive elements, digital media, and new immersive approaches to the artist’s career. They will understand why Escher asked, “Are you sure a floor cannot be a ceiling?”
About M.C. Escher
Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898–1972) was born in Leeuwarden, the capital of Friesland in the Netherlands, but grew up in Arnhem. Although he studied architecture in Haarlem, he was drawn to graphic art by Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, a teacher at his school who profoundly influenced his graphic style. When Escher moved to Italy, his early output was dominated by advertising and landscape prints there. He became famous for his tessellated, or tile-like, patterns after seeing Moorish tile work on a trip to the Alhambra and Granada, Spain in 1936. The rise of fascism in Italy forced him to leave Italy for Switzerland, and he abandoned Italian imagery in protest. He made his way to Belgium and returned to the Netherlands after the Nazi invasion. He faced five unproductive years during the occupation, unable to sell his work because he refused to certify his “Aryanness” and was horrified that he was unable to save his teacher de Mesquita from Auschwitz. His own family faced deprivation during the final “hunger winter” of the war.
Escher’s increasingly sophisticated imagery gained an appreciative audience, especially during his first exhibition at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum in 1954, staged to coincide with the major Global conference of mathematicians. He remained skeptical of the enthusiasm for his work among fans of psychedelia during the 1960s, turning down a request from Mick Jagger to design an album cover. His body of work eventually grew to over 2,000 items before his death in 1972. However, it was not until Douglas Hofstadter’s 1979 publication of Gödel, Escher, Bach that Escher’s work became tied in the public’s imagination to quantum physics and advanced mathematics, cementing the hold his work gained over the global audience it still enjoys today.
About the Arlington Museum of Art
The Arlington Museum of Art is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to championing creativity and providing access to art for the educational enrichment and cultural development of the community. arlingtonmuseum.org
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