Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898 – 1972) is one of the earlier proponents of graphic art and is one of the most famous and acclaimed graphic artists of all times. He is famous for are the drawings he made on impossible reality mostly using the Mezzotint method.

Escher Self Portrait (1929) : Image Credit

The world of Escher’s drawings is a world where you can see things happening illustrated on paper but at the same time you realize that what you are seeing cannot be real. You see it in your own eyes but you know that it cannot happen. It is a unique world where geometry and impossible reality converges. His drawings were not created from observations but from visual hyper dimensional and impossible reality imagery in his mind.

Still Life and Street (1937) : Escher’s first drawing on impossible reality was called Still Life and Street (1937). This picture shows the top of a table with different items and books racked on it but the plane of the table top gradually blends into a street with buildings on both sides. The books actually lean against the walls of the buildings.

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Sky and Water (1938) : This is one of the many drawings of Escher where he has used black and white to show a metamorphosis from one kind of objects to another kind using 2D and 3D effects to very good effect. This drawing has two distinct parts, the lower part showing a black water body with white fishes swimming in it and the upper part where black birds are flying in a white sky. The beauty of the drawing and Escher’s genius is evident where the transformation from water to sky and from fish to birds occur. The fishes at the bottom are drawn with a 3D effect and as we move from bottom to top, the fishes gradually become 2D where the metamorphosis from fish to birds occur. As we continue to move to the top, these 3D effects in the birds becomes more prominent.

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Drawing Hands (1948) : This is perhaps one of the most famous of Escher’s works. This drawing is one of the most famous of Escher’s paradoxes where two hands which rise from flat wrists on a piece of paper are drawing each other into existence. This drawing throws the question of which one is drawing which one and which one was the first to be drawn? This is beautiful.

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Relativity (1953) : This is a beautiful example of Escher’s world of impossible reality. The world in this picture is one where the laws of gravity does not apply and our normal concept of direction goes haywire. Which direction is top and which is the bottom or what is above and what is below cannot be defined if this picture were true. This is a world where there are multiple gravitational sources, one for each plane. You have see the drawing to understand.

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Ascending and Descending (1960) : This is another drawing where our conventional sense of directions do not apply. The drawing shows a staircase at the top of a building. The staircase is arranged as the sides of a quadrilateral and people are walking on it on both directions forming two concentric processions one ascending and the other descending. The unreal thing about this drawing is that there is no vertical rise or fall even if a person walks up or down the stairs. If a person starts from one of the vertexes of the quadrilateral and walks upwards, after he traverses all the four sides of the four sided staircase he will find himself at the point where he had started his journey. Had he decided to walk downwards, the same thing would have happened. This means that no matter how much he climbs or descends in the staircase he will have no resultant vertical rise or fall.

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Waterfall (1961) : This is another drawing created by Escher where the elements differ from the laws of gravity. This drawing shows a waterfall in which the water falls at a waterwheel and flows through an aqueduct, which starts at the base of the waterwheel, to the top of the waterfall and again falls down upon the waterwheel completing and repeating the cycle. The drawing suggests that the aqueduct is sloped downhill from the top of the waterfall to the waterwheel but the structure of the aqueduct and the way it is supported on pillars is unreal and impossible. The water is flowing upwards against the force of gravity through the aqueduct and again falling due to gravitational force.

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Metamorphosis I (1937), Metamorphosis II (1940) Metamorphosis III (1968) : Metamorphosis was one of the most favorite subjects of Escher. He had painted several drawings on this topic where he has shown objects metamorphosing from one form to another but the morphing is always gradual in all of Escher’s metamorphosis drawings. He drew the Metamorphosis series in installments over a period of time. 

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Metamorphosis II : Image Credit

Metamorphosis III : Image Credit

Here is a link to a continuous image of Metamorphosis III.

Escher’s paintings have inspired many artists into graphical art. His drawings have the elements of hyperspace and a higher dimensional world.