The exhibition that has broken all attendance records in recent years is coming to Naples for the first time: from 1 November 2018 to 22 April 2019, PAN | Palazzo delle Arti Di Napoli is hosting the major retrospective 'Escher'.
The show not only features works by the visionary Dutch genius, so popular with the general public, but also a wide-ranging section devoted to the influence his creations have had on the creations of later generations of artists, from album sleeves to comics, advertising and cinema.
A total of around 200 works, ranging from Escher’s early period to the present.
Relativity (1953), Bond of Union (1956), Metamorphosis II (1939) and Day and Night (1938) are just some of the iconic prints that made Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898–1972) famous. They are on show in the Naples exhibition, along with a selection of works – on public display for the first time – that the artist created while travelling along the Amalfi Coast to Ravello in spring 1923.
This trip to Italy, which took in the whole peninsula, had a profound effect on his personal life as well as his art: in Campania he met a young Swiss woman, Jetta Umiker, whom he married the following year.
In a vintage photo, taken from a high angle, the newly-weds are framed by a stunning view of Atrani and its church perched high above the sea. This church is a recurrent motif in Escher's works, even appearing in Metamorphosis II.
On this 1931 trip to Italy, where he spent various long periods, Escher visited Vietri sul Mare, Amalfi, Ravello, Scala, Positano, Praiano and Conca dei Marini. The drawings he made in the different places were developed into at least 15 prints, including Atrani, Coast of Amalfi (1931), Dilapidated Houses in Atrani (1931), San Cosimo, Ravello (1932) and The Hamlet of Turello (1932).
In the South of Italy, Escher developed most of the ideas and atmospheres which, rooted in a synthesis of science and art, characterize his mature production and the studies of form that have made him unique in his genre.
The audio guide supplied free to all visitors enables them to explore worlds constructed with 2- and 3-D perceptual elements, according to the mathematical and geometric laws that underpin his art. Different tools are provided in the exhibition, such as scientific experiments and educational aids, to help visitors of all ages appreciate and understand the world of a multifaceted and brilliant artist who has always enjoyed widespread popularity.
The exhibition, curated by Mark Veldhuysen and Federico Giudiceandrea, is promoted by the Department of Culture and Tourism of the Naples City Council and produced and organized by Gruppo #arthemisia in collaboration with the M. C. Escher Foundation.
The initiative is supported by Generali Italia through Valore Cultura, its programme that promotes art and culture throughout Italy and seeks to interest a vast and varied public – families, youth, clients and employees – in the world of art through reductions on tickets for exhibitions, theatrical performances, events and artistic and cultural activities, with the aim of creating shared value. The exhibition's special partners are Ricola and Q8, with Trenitalia as technical sponsor, Il Mattino as media partner and RDS as radio partner.
The event is recommended by Sky Arte HD. The catalogue is published by Maurits.
THE EXHIBITION
An artist sui generis, Escher was fond of saying "wonder is the salt of the earth". Indeed, he must be given credit for broadening the possibilities of graphic art and arousing wonder in all those who view his work, in which everything is connected: science, nature, rigorous analysis and profound meditation .
The exhibition, which opens with the works in an Art Nouveau style executed while Escher was training under Jessurun de Mesquita, focuses on the period he spent travelling in Italy and his rapport with Campania in particular.
Inspired and influenced by the art of his times and of the past, the artist interpreted geometric construction and rigour in a visionary way, through the purest aesthetic research. A multifaceted artist of his day, he also anticipated entire artistic currents, like Surrealism and Op art, of which he can be considered an actual precursor. Indeed, the world of numbers, geometry and mathematics did not provide the only means of shaping his creative universe. A complex genius who drew freely on various languages and combined them to create a fascinating new approach, he is unique in the entire history of art, and has always captivated the general public.
In fact the art of Escher, which the new technologies seem to be striving to imitate, never appears dated, even though its creator died almost fifty years ago.
Featuring around 200 works in all, the exhibition is divided into 8 sections:
1 Maurits Cornelis Escher: the beginnings
2 Escher, Italy and Campania
3 Tessellation
4 Structure of the space
5 Metamorphosis
6 Geometric paradoxes
7 Commissions
8 Eschermania
A special feature of the show is the games and experiences available in each section that enable the visitor to become the protagonist of Escher's amazing world and negotiate the paradoxical perspectives, geometries and compositions that the great artist created in his works.
Section 1 - Maurits Cornelis Escher: the beginnings
This section traces the first steps in art taken by the young Escher, who immediately displayed a gift for drawing. This disappointed his father who wanted him to follow in his footsteps and become an engineer. However, Escher's talent was appreciated by Jessurun de Mesquita, an engraver in the Art Noveau style, under whom was able to study. Thus Escher honed his skills, rapidly mastered technique and learned to work diligently. At this time he started to explore the possibilities of tessellation, understood as the regular division of a plane for decorative purposes. In his early Dutch period he also produced engravings, for example the Flor De Pascua (Easter Flower) woodcuts: illustrations for a text written by the young artist's friend Aad van Stolk to celebrate the birth of his baby boy.
Section 2 – Escher, Italy and Campania
Escher's formation would not have been complete, however, had he not spent considerable time in Italy, which rounded out his personality and also offered him his first work opportunities. He had his first solo exhibition in Siena in 1923 and produced the Emblemata (all displayed in the exhibition) for a small book of illustrated mottoes, which he devised with the great Dutch art historian Godefridus Johannes Hoogewerff, a friend who held him in high esteem. In this section the accent is on the way in which the landscape, nature and history of Italy, and Campania in particular, stimulated the artist's extraordinarily creative mind.
Section 3 – Tessellation
This section addresses the theme of tessellation, which in Escher’s works immediately reveals his Art Nouveau roots. The artist enthusiastically imparted the principles of this regular division of the plane at lectures and demonstrations, and in a booklet that came out in 1957. Further light is shed on the subject by a documentary on the Alhambra palace complex in Granada, where Escher sketched the intricate geometric patterns of its decorative scheme, which provided inspiration for his tessellations.
Section 4 – Structure of the space
Escher was fascinated by the “structure of the space”, which he explored endlessly. Hence, a whole section is devoted to this theme, in which the artist’s different approaches to the various problems involved are illustrated. The first concerns “reflecting surfaces”, starting with the curved mirror-like one in Hand with Reflecting Sphere; the second, the actual structure of space, well- exemplified by the engraving Depth II (which in the exhibition is transformed into a real environment with a recursive perspective that can be explored); the third, ribbons and geometric solids.
Section 5 – Metamorphosis
Another important aspect of Escher’s work involves his reflections on the world, such as the transformation of one form into another, which is most eloquently rendered in his celebrated masterpiece Metamorphosis II (1939). The large woodcut print explores the seamless transformation of one image into another, each growing out of the previous one, and finally coming full circle. In fact, this work begins with the Dutch word metamorphose, with which it also ends after morphing into the most unexpected images, ranging from frogs to a honeycomb, birds and the church in Atrani.
Section 6 – Geometric paradoxes
This section focuses on the transition from two to three dimensions. The paradox, and above all the challenge, lies in the creation of an illusory effect within the page; in other words, in suggesting the transition realistically by drawing or engraving something that deceives the eye, such as the Three Spheres. This is the essential key to understanding Escher’s paradoxical space, as in Other World, Up and Down and Relativity, also when it is characterized by the infinite repetition of the image through the “Droste effect”, which he applied, for example, in the lithograph Print Gallery.
Section 7 – Commissions
As with all artists, Escher’s production did not only consist of major works. In his daily activity an artist needs to find other means of earning money, even though Escher himself was not obliged to, because he was well-off. This section is devoted to works commissioned from him, which ranged from ex libris (a small printed or decorative label placed in books belonging to the same personal library) to greeting cards, book jackets, illustrations and other items that he was occasionally asked to create. What is remarkable is that the quality of this output was as high as that of his most important works; moreover, these “minor” pieces gave him a chance to experiment with solutions he would later use in “major” works.
Section 8 - Eschermania
An artist’s greatness is also measured by his capacity to influence not only other artists, but also society. So we have chosen to end with a section entitled “Eschermania”, a neologism coined especially for the exhibition. Escher’s legacy shows that he more than measured up on both counts. Instead of being confined to the studio Escher’s art was extended to gift boxes, postage stamps and greeting cards; it entered the world of comics and fashion, and wound up on the sleeves of LPs by the big names in pop music, and was even featured in advertising and cinema. And it doesn’t stop there: Escher’s great art has had a more or less direct influence on seminal artists of the 20th century, such as Victor Vasarely, the leading exponent of Op art, and a long line of followers who still look on him as a teacher.
EXHIBITION VENUE
Naples, PAN | Palazzo Delle Arti Napoli
Full price € 13.00 (Audio guide included) Reduced price € 11.00 (Audio guide included)
T. +39 081 1865991
www.mostraescher.it
OPENING TIMES
Every day 9:30 am – 7:30 pm
(ticket office closes an hour before the exhibition)
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