Apart from being a graphic artist, M.C. Escher illustrated books, designed tapestries, postage stamps and murals. He was born in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, as the fourth and youngest son of a civil engineer. After 5 years the family moved to Arnhem where Escher spent most of his youth. After failing his high school exams, Maurits ultimately was enrolled in the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem, but ended up focussing on graphic art instead of Architecture.
After finishing school, he traveled extensively through Italy, where he met his wife Jetta Umiker, whom he married in 1924. They settled in Rome, where they stayed until 1935. During these 11 years, Escher would travel each year throughout Italy, drawing and sketching for the various prints he would make when he returned home.
M.C. Escher became fascinated by the regular Division of the Plane, when he first visited the Alhambra, a fourteen century Moorish castle in Granada, Spain in 1922.
During the years in Switzerland and throughout the Second World War, he vigorously pursued his hobby, by drawing 62 of the total of 137 Regular Division Drawings he would make in his lifetime.
He would extend his passion for the Regular Division of the Plane, by using some of his drawings as the basis for yet another hobby, carving beech wood spheres.
He also played with architecture, perspective and impossible spaces.
http://www.mcescher.com/Biography/biography.htm
Here are some examples of his work:
http://www.mcescher.com/Gallery/gallery.htm
Tetrahedral Planetoide 1954 woodcut in green and black, printed from 2 blocks
Up and Down 1947 Lithograph
both these artworks are surreal in the way that they are drawn realistically, but in an impossible way.
Escher created many surreal artworks in his lifetime.
In this particular artwork (up and down) he has done two prints of the same scene just in different perspectives, one looking down and the other up.
