Exhibition archive

This summer, Escher in The Palace welcomes the three-dimensional paper art objects of Dutch artist Annita Smit (b. 1966) between the work of M.C. Escher. Smit uses paper in a three-dimensional way in her intricate artworks, which are full of rhythm, movement and structure. For the objects in this exhibition Smit has used remnants of Bible production and old Bible paper. Her work is characterised by refinement, subtle colours and detailing. What appears from a distance to be one small world turns out to be composed of minuscule cut and coloured pieces of gossamer paper.

The most famous printmaker in the Netherlands is without a doubt M.C. Escher. His graphic art depicting optical illusions has earned him a unique place in both national and international art history. But he was not the only Dutch printmaker of importance in his time. The exhibition 'Graphic Grandeur: Escher and his Contemporaries' at Escher in The Palace highlights the graphic art of Escher's Dutch contemporaries.

In Glorious Glass Escher in The Palace showcased the finest optical glass from the Stichting Modern Glas collection, in collaboration with Kunstmuseum Den Haag. The glass sculptures from the Czech Republic and Slovakia magnify, reduce and colour everything around them, and literally give us a new perspective on the world.

Two artists, two disciplines, but a shared fondness for enigmatic architecture. In winter 2019/2020, Escher in The Palace brought together the work of artist M.C. Escher (1898 – 1972) and the sculptures of contemporary artist and architect David Umemoto (1975) for the first time.

The first exhibition ever to bring together M.C. Escher’s secondary school days with the prints that he was to make thirty years later. Escher’s former secondary school in Arnhem shows a considerable degree of correspondence between the real world and a series of post-war prints by Escher. It is generally assumed that after he left Italy in 1935 reality had very little bearing on Escher’s prints. People talk of his ‘mindscapes’, as opposed to the ‘landscapes’ that characterized his earlier work.