Landscape 1920

Maurits Cornelis Escher made this landscape drawing in 1920, and you can see how he’s already playing with depth and perception. Look at the intense layering of marks, they’re not just descriptive, but constructive. The ink creates texture, a real thicket of lines. He uses the blackness to build a space and suggest a world that feels both real and imagined. Escher is creating a tension between what we see and what we know. Do you see how he uses hatching and cross-hatching to sculpt form? Those mountains in the background, they almost dissolve into the sky, don’t they? It reminds me of Piranesi’s etchings, but Escher takes it to this uniquely personal space. It’s like he’s mapping a world, but also mapping his own mind. The landscape becomes a mental space.