The Monnaie de Paris is hosting the first major Parisian exhibition dedicated to Maurits Cornelis Escher, the Dutch master of impossible constructions and optical illusions. Running from November 15, 2025, to March 1, 2026, this retrospective celebrates an artist whose work transcends traditional boundaries between art and mathematics. Though often overlooked by the contemporary art establishment, Escher has cultivated a devoted following among both art enthusiasts and mathematicians who find endless fascination in his paradoxical visual worlds. His intricate prints challenge perception and invite viewers to question the very nature of reality through meticulously crafted geometric puzzles that seem plausible at first glance but reveal impossible contradictions upon closer inspection.

Born in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, in 1898, Escher developed his distinctive style while remaining deliberately independent from major avant-garde movements like Surrealism, despite sharing some thematic interests with artists such as René Magritte. He trained at the School of Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem starting in 1919, where he discovered his passion for printmaking under Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita. Working primarily in woodcut and lithography, Escher perfected techniques inherited from masters like William Hogarth and Giovanni Battista Piranesi. His drawings demonstrate extraordinary technical skill, yet their true power lies in how they subvert visual logic, creating spaces that appear plausible until closer inspection reveals their impossible nature and internal inconsistencies.

Escher's life journey significantly influenced his artistic development and thematic focus. After completing his studies in 1922, he traveled extensively through Italy and Spain, where Islamic decorative patterns at the Alhambra in Granada sparked his lifelong obsession with tessellation and repetitive motifs. He married Jetta Umiker in Rome in 1924 and lived there until 1935, when rising fascism forced the family to relocate first to Switzerland, then to Belgium in 1937. The Brussels period marked his intensified focus on graphic enigmas and optical illusions. When World War II erupted, he returned to the Netherlands in 1941, settling near Utrecht where he would remain for the rest of his life, producing his most celebrated works in a peaceful bourgeois existence.

Despite his profound impact on mathematics, Escher consistently rejected the label of scientist, insisting he was an artist guided by visual intuition rather than formal equations. Nevertheless, his work displays remarkable mathematical sophistication that inspired leading thinkers. The famous Penrose triangle, conceived by mathematician Roger Penrose in 1958, was directly inspired by Escher's prints, and Penrose explicitly acknowledged this debt. In turn, Escher visualized Penrose's impossible staircase, creating his own interpretations that brought abstract mathematical concepts to vivid life. This reciprocal relationship demonstrates how Escher's visual imagination anticipated formal mathematical theories, including fractals, which Benoît Mandelbrot would later formulate in 1975—three years after Escher's death.

The exhibition highlights several masterpieces that define Escher's legacy and technical range. "Self-Portrait in Spherical Mirror" (1935) showcases his technical prowess through the distorted reflection on a convex surface, questioning appearances while grounding the image in the tangible reality of his own hand holding the mirror. "Relativity" (1953) creates a dizzying world where gravity operates in multiple directions simultaneously, with staircases connecting in impossible loops. Art historian Ernst Gombrich described Escher's universe as one where "the terms up and down, right and left no longer mean anything." Finally, "Snakes" (1969), one of his last works, features interlocking circles that shrink toward the center in a stunning woodcut that prefigures fractal geometry through its infinite regression of scale and intricate detail.

Escher's influence extends far beyond his 448 lithographs and 2,000 drawings into popular culture and scientific visualization. In 1969, he established a foundation to preserve his legacy, which eventually led to the opening of the Escher Museum in The Hague in 2002. Today, his work continues to captivate new generations, appearing in films, album covers, and scientific publications. The Paris exhibition offers visitors not only original prints but also immersive installations that recreate his illusionary environments. This retrospective confirms Escher's status as a visionary who, though operating outside artistic mainstreams, created a universal visual language that speaks to the mathematician, the artist, and the curious mind in everyone who encounters his impossible worlds.