M.C. Escher in the Hermitage

On 16 September, 2003, in the Hall of Twelve Columns (Room No. 244) of the New Hermitage opened an exhibition co-organized by the State Hermitage Museum and the M.C. Escher Foundation, supported by the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in St. Petersburg.

The first exhibition of Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) in Russia is a gift of the Kingdom of the Netherlands for the 300th Anniversary of St. Petersburg. It includes 80 works by the outstanding Dutch graphic artist, which amply represent his achievement.

The artist’s life is split into two lengthy periods. During the greater part of the first period — till 1937 — Escher made drawings of south Italian and Mediterranean towns, later reproducing them with the use of the techniques of linoleum engraving and xylography. In these works, objective representation is emphasized. The exhibition shows landscapes of this period, including Castrovalva (1930) and Village Turello, South Italy (1932).

The second period was triggered by Escher’s last travel to Spain. The master’s design grows ever more fantastic and abstract, as in the lithograph Reptiles (1943). The borderline between objectivity and subjectivity becomes blurred (woodcut Another World, 1947). No staircase exists on which you could go down as you are going up (Ascending and Descending, 1960). There is no colonnade with the quaintly entangled columns decorating a pavilion in the lithograph Belvedere (1958).

One of the most remarkable exhibits is the world’s largest woodcut Metamorphosis II.

The works showed in the exhibition are loaned by the M.C. Escher Foundation, created by the artist in 1968. Its honorary chairman is now the artist’s son George A. Escher.

Slaviya Publishers has issued the exhibition’s catalogue, opened by the welcoming addresses of H.C.J. Everaars, Consul General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in St. Petersburg, and Mikhail B. Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum. Articles are authored by Willem F. Feldhuysen, Chairman of the M.C. Escher Foundation, and A.V. Ippolitov of the Hermitage Department of West European Art, the exhibition’s curator

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The catalogue

At the exhibition

The world’s largest woodcut