M. C. Escher: Monohedral Tessellations

Many have questions like what are tessellations? Tessellations are the arrangement of small squares in a checkered or mosaic form. Tessellations are seen all around, but yet you don't notice them. Tessellations can be found in your house from the tiles in bathrooms, or even to the honeycomb of bees. There was a famous man with the name of M.C. Esher, and he was the first to use these tessellations in artwork. He became well known for them and being the first one to use them M.C. Esher became really popular. Tessellations means to form or arrange small squares in a checkered pattern, tessellation comes from the greek word tesseres which means four. Tessellation and tiling are both the same thing, they both are repetitive of patterns of the same shape with no overlapping or gaps. As an art form, tessellation is particularly rich in mathematics, which ties into geometry, topology, and group theory. There are monohedral tessellations, mono meaning one and hedral meaning shape. Monohedral tessellations are made up of one shape, the shape …show more content…
Escher started using them in artwork making his artwork most famous for tessellations. Escher was a 20th century dutch illustrator whose innovative works explored echoing patterns, perception, space and transformations. Escher was born on June 1898 in Leeuwarden Netherlands. Escher established a home in Rome where he worked on engravings and prints that was natural landscapes and architecture. Escher also created more human orientated work and more self portraits. With the rise of fascism in Italy, Escher relocated to switzerland in 1935. Escher visited spain and was very interested in their structures, and the patterns on them which he later focused his work on tessellations. The Eschers moved to Belgium in 1937, but the invasion of the Nazi left them to settle in Holland in 1941. M.C. Escher died on March 27th, 1972. Leaving a legacy of more than 2,000