Escher in Het Paleis
The Dutch graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher, 1898-1972, is a past master at drawing impossible situations. Only when you take a closer look do you realise that what he has drawn couldn’t possibly exist. Water flows uphill, birds metamorphose into fish and figures walk endlessly up and down the staircase in the same courtyard. In “Another World” you look into space while simultaneously viewing the craters on the lunar surface from above and from the side. In other drawings small reptiles crawl out of the frame across objects on a table and back onto the sheet of paper.
Less well known are the intimate prints Escher made of Italian landscapes between 1922 and 1935 and a number of self-portraits, including the most famous in a large reflecting glass ball. Escher drew a wonderful portrait of his ageing father reading with a magnifying glass.
He designed stamps, banknotes, motifs for a damask tablecloth and mosaic tiles. The exhibition in Escher in Het Paleis combines works of art with biographical material including a slide show, photographs, letters, studies of divisions of the plane and preliminary sketches.
The second floor is devoted to answering the key question “Optical illusion, what's that?”.
This presentation allows you to experience the work of M.C. Escher: in Escher’s room, you can change in size and you can make his drawings move on touch screens. There’s a Fathomlessly Deep Optical Illusion Box. You can look at yourself in an enormous convex mirror, play with Escher’s work on the computer and try to build the impossible triangle! Escher’s art becomes a surprising all-round experience in a specially-built film theatre.
At weekends there are Escher Quests for the children while during the holidays workshops for children are organised on Wednesday and Sunday afternoons (link to activities for children/workshops), all for no extra charge. The combination of Escher’s marvellous work and the attractions turn a visit to Escher in Het Paleis into a special experience. Hannelore says in the guest book that she thinks the museum’s “really cool” and she is not the only one. A foreign visitor thinks Escher in Het Paleis is: “the best museum in Europe!”.
