BRESSANONE.- The intellectual property of Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) is in new hands: collectors Federico Giudiceandrea (Bressanone, Italy), and Salvatore Iaquinta (San Rafael, California, USA) have acquired the rights to M.C. Escher's artwork as well as ownership of the M.C. Escher Company in The Netherlands.

In continuity with the previous management, the new owners aim to make M.C. Escher's work accessible to an ever-wider public, also using new technologies and in collaboration with museums and cultural institutions all over the world. A large exhibition is currently being held in Rome, another in Vero Beach, Florida, and others are being prepared worldwide.

Escher is widely recognized for his impossible buildings and his tessellations, tilings of perfectly interlocked animals. Initially, Escher was appreciated by mathematicians and crystallographers, and then hippies, who illegally created blacklight posters. Over the years, Escher won over the general public with paradoxical representations, optical and perspective illusions, impossible or self-referential figures, and works based on precise geometric knowledge.

Escher produced mainly woodcuts and lithographs but also linocuts and mezzotints. His works continue to inspire various sectors and reference to his work are found in advertising, fashion, film, and music. That said, he did twice declined Mick Jagger to design an album cover!

In addition to copyrights, the acquisition also includes an important collection of works, personal letters, unique objects, and documents. Some of these works are currently in Rome on display.

The new guardians of M.C. Escher's artistic legacy

Both Federico Giudiceandrea and Salvatore Iaquinta fell in love with Escher's art at an early age, however, their careers were not in the arts. Giudiceandrea is an engineer and Iaquinta is a head and neck surgeon.

The new owners hope to deepen the knowledge of M.C. Escher's life and work, to promote his legacy, and, to bring new technologies into the exhibition space to allow the public to experience his work in a novel way, thanks to the possibilities offered by augmented reality and multimedia interactivity. In the future, this aspect will be further expanded, involving computer scientists and engineers.

An exhibition dedicated to M.C. Escher in Rome until April, 1 2024

M.C. Escher had a special bond with Italy. After two trips in 1921 and 1922, he met his wife there in 1923 and settled down in Rome, where two of his three children were born and where he lived until 1935. To mark the centenary of M.C. Escher's arrival in Rome, an exhibition was organized at Palazzo Bonaparte, in Piazza Venezia, curated by Federico Giudiceandrea and Mark Veldhuysen, current director of M.C. Escher Company, in collaboration with Arthemisia. The exhibition opened on October 31st and will remain open to the public until April 1, 2024. 300 works are on display, including his most iconic works such as Reptiles, Drawing Hands, and Relativity along with some works unknown to the general public. Read more: www.mostraescher.it. Three more exhibitions are being prepared for Japan, the first of which will open at the Sagawa Art Museum in Shiga, Japan, on 14 December 2023.