Join us on Saturday morning, May 14th, 10:30 am for the 21st Chrysler Treasures Meet & Greet, followed by a tour of the Chrysler Museum's new M.C. Escher special exhibit led by Episcodad beginning at 11:00 am. If you are late in arriving you can catch up with us in the exhibit. The Museum is located at One Memorial Place, Norfolk, Virginia. Admission is free.
Dutch artist Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) is one of the world's most well-known graphic artists. His fascination with mathematical theory motivated him to produce imagery that constantly challenged notions of reality and its underlying structures. This special exhibit presents more than 150 of his works that span his career, including "Ascending and Descending", a print of an impossible building with a staircase that mirrors a mobius loop (a surface with only one side and one boundary curve). The exhibition includes woodcuts, lithographs, and etchings.
Escher was raised in war-ravaged Arnhem (Netherlands), but moved to Italy where his early work was dominated by advertizing and landscape prints. He became famous for his tile-like patterns after seeing Moorish art on a trip to Spain in 1936. The rise of facism in Italy led him back to the Netherlands, where he was forced to sit out the Nazi occupation, unable to sell his work because he refused to certify his "Aryanness". After WWII ended, his increasingly sophisticated imagery gained him an appreciative audience, especially among fans of psychedalia during the 1960's. His oeuvre eventually grew to over 2000 works before his death in 1972. Douglas Hofstadter's 1979 publication of "Godel, Escher, Bach" tied his work in to quantum physics and advanced mathematics, cementing his hold over the global audience it enjoys today.