On May 23, 24,
and 26, amidst crowds of local villagers, both he and Jetta
made
careful drawings of the Alhambra designs; then they spent hours
elaborating them in their hotel room. Some of their color sketches are
shown here. They show several different examples of regular plane, fillings
with colored majolica pieces of one or more different geometric shapes
and regular-division designs traced in stucco.
On May 30,
the couple traveled to Cordoba and visited the mosque "La
Mezquita: al-Masgid", built during the eighth through the tenth
centuries as an Islamic sanctuary. During the next few days, Escher
sketched not only the wonderful array of arches and pillars of the mosque,
but also several examples of regular patterns found in its decorative red
brickwork.
They next traveled to
Seville
(' Ashbiylah) and visited the Alcazar (al-Gazar),
also a showpiece of Moorish Islamic decorative art. They left Spain
by ship on June 7.
From September
1936 until March 1937, Escher
transformed his travel sketches into woodcuts. Although this work occupied
most of his time, he could not forget the decorative patterns of the Moors
that had so intrigued him. The urge to create his own interlocking patterns
had been reawakened, and he now had a small collection of geometric designs
that could serve as a point of departure to develop his own ideas.
The design used for
his first attempt in October 1936 was from the Alhambra
and
was one that would serve him often over the subsequent years as a fundamental
source. Or, more accurately, the geometric grid of the Alhambra designs
served as a scaffolding for Escher's enigmatic
interlocking designs which are so much celebrated in the West as Escher's
gateway to modern art graphics. |
