Biography of M.C. Escher

18 Pages 4583 Words

oo much." The two friends returned to Holland after only a couple of weeks in Florence, and Escher went on to San Gimignano with a sister of one of them. He did a great deal of serious drawing here and in the next few towns he visited: Volterra and Siena. He spent all of the spring of 1922 roaming the Italian countryside, drawing landscapes, plants, and even insects. In Assissi he met a fellow Dutchman, the painter Gerretsen. The two met occassionally over the next few years.
Returning home in June, Escher found that he could not be happy and productive in his old environs. He seized his first opportunity to return to southern europe, taking a freighter to Spain with some friends, and saving expenses by caring for their two small children on the trip. It was on this trip that he first saw the phenomenon of a phosphorescent sea, so beautifully expressed later in his woodcut of the same name. In Spain, he saw his first bullfight: an "off-putting and barbaric" event. He visited Madrid and its famous museum, the Prado, but was unimpressed by many ...