In one of my first blog posts I confessed my lack of cultural involvement when I am at home in Rome. In this long Christmas break I managed to visit at least one exhibition so far, which made me feel like I have broken the bad habit- so something to be proud of. I went to see the Escher exhibition at Il Chiostro del Bramante which is the cloister adjacent to Chiesa di Santa Maria della Pace, a church in central Rome. The space is absolutely beautiful and seeing such a modern and innovative (we might not see it as such today but at the time Escher lived and worked it certainly was!) art exhibition in an ancient, traditional, and once religious space.
Escher is a very famous artist, most educated children would spot his geometric drawings and his work is generally considered cool by more or less everyone so I guess he doesn’t need much introduction. The interesting thing was, as soon as I entered the first room of the exhibition I realized I was just one of those innumerable people saying “oh yeah of course I know Escher, yes I like his work…” but who actually don’t know anything about him and his artworks. I guess this is quite common nowadays. I often realize how the younger generations know everything but at the same time so little about it, and most of us (including me) is ignorant in relation to the means of education available to first world countries. But that’s another story, back to Escher now.
I really enjoyed the exhibition, it is always interesting and good to learn something new. I also very much appreciated the fact that some artworks of other artists contemporary to Escher where exhibited to show the influence he had on the art world and also to show the same kind of style but adopted differently by someone else. Escher spent 12 years in Italy in the first half of the twentieth century and he also lived in Rome ( – in an apartment which is literally 2 minutes away from the house where I was born and lived until I was around 12 years old!).
The exhibition came out to be a perfect revision of the first term at uni as Escher applied all theories of Gestalt to his work. Continue reading
Margherita Macchiati 