A rational illusionist. Ferrara hosts the personal exhibition of Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898- 1972), offering us a journey that challenges perception and logic, among illusory and geometric works, peppered with interactive stations and rooms with visionary games. The public thus has the opportunity to immerse themselves in the mind of the famous Dutch artist, whose language constitutes the reading and exploration of everyday reality, through enchanting and scientific images.
The exhibition itinerary articulates around one hundred and thirty works in six exhibition rooms that retrace the life of the well-known artist. The first two in fact go from his beginnings in Haarlem to his numerous trips to the Bel Paese, following which he managed to transform his drawings into graphics, initially tangential to the Art Nouveau-symbolist environment and then scattered with optical illusions and bizarre perspectives. As the next two rooms report, over the years his woodcuts, prints and drawings will be enriched with different themes and styles, such as tessellations and metamorphosis, investigating theses such as life and the passage of time. All through illusory and geometric visions, tools representing his vision of reality, sometimes playful, perhaps impossible, but undoubtedly fascinating.
MC Escher Foundation collection, Netherlands
Space and the geometric paradox are the protagonists of the last two sections of the exhibition, declaring the artist’s admiration and interest towards the scientific community, which is still expressed today. In fact, with him mathematical and geometric concepts became tools for the graphic representation of the infinite, in a playful vision in which at times he himself, according to him, found it difficult to clarify whether the black and white figures belonged to the realm of mathematics or to that of of art.
The artist thus invites us to reflect on how art, combined with science, can make us notice a different, illusory and sometimes playful, but at the same time rational, perception of life.
In fact, from room to room we realize how the possible meets the impossible in each of his prints and engravings, in worlds that are certainly imaginary but perhaps not so distant from where our mind would sometimes like to take us.
Escher today continues to enchant and inspire generations of all ages, leaving an indelible mark on 20th century visual culture, design and advertising. Each of his works remains a rational unicum, where Maurits, as reported by the writings present throughout the exhibition, adored chaos to reproduce its order, through a work seen as a game, but very serious. He dared to challenge perception, leading us to look beyond appearances, on an extraordinary journey in which Ferrara and Escher await you at the exhibition.
