Step into the impossible world of Escher in The Hague in 2023
6 April 2023
The Hague – In The Hague in 2023 you can step into the impossible world of Escher; the artist who makes water flow upwards, turns birds into fish and lets hands draw each other. This year marks 125 years since the birth of the Netherlands' most famous graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972). This weekend marks the start of the Escher celebrations.
2023: The Hague, City of Escher
With the largest museum collection of Escher works in the world, Kunstmuseum Den Haag and Escher in The Palace form the heart of this special anniversary year. We celebrate Escher’s birthday all year round in The Hague with various exhibitions, activities and city dressing. Escher's graphic work is about change, contrasts and perception and fits in seamlessly with the identity of The Hague, the city of contrasts and contradictions. City and beach, modern and historic, raw and refined.
Exhibitions
With the exhibition Escher – Other World in the Kunstmuseum Den Haag visitors will experience Escher's work like never before. Here, his famous prints – in which optical illusions, impossible architecture, reflection and nature are key themes – are combined with spectacular, spatial installations by the Belgian architecture- and artist duo Gijs Van Vaerenbergh.
This weekend also marks the opening of the exhibition The Man Who Discovered Escher: Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita at Escher in The Palace. In addition to being an artist and graphic artist, De Mesquita (of Portuguese-Jewish heritage) was a teacher of graphic techniques. He met Escher for the first time at the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem and convinced him to switch to graphics. In the night of January 31 to February 1, 1944, De Mesquita, his wife and their son Jaap are deported. The lives of De Mesquita and his wife come to a tragic end in Auschwitz.
The artistic preferences of Escher and De Mesquita are similar, but De Mesquita has his very own signature in which powerful lines, fantasy, humor or threat are repeating elements. The gripping graphics of De Mesquita and Escher now hang side by side in Escher in The Palace.
When considering perspective and illusion, you also need to consider the magical Panorama of Scheveningen (1831) by Hendrik Willem Mesdag. Just as Escher stretched the boundaries of perspective, Mesdag explored the boundaries of the visible world in his panorama. During the Escher year, the exhibition Ulrike Heydenreich - Longing for the distance can also be seen in the Museum Panorama Mesdag from 1 April. Since the beginning of her professional career, the contemporary German artist has had a fascination for panoramic mountain landscapes, while playing with perspective and illusion.