Escher's Gallery by Wendy Shijia Wang

Escher’s Gallery is a one-page interactive visualization exploring the 455 works by M.C. Escher through the years.

After learning that Escher is famous for Optical art and tessellation, I’m curious about when did he start exploring Optical art? What other art styles did he use in his career? So I collected the data for all of his works to see if there are answers. Data of each piece of work include the year of publish, art style, and whether the work is 'famous' according to the data source website.

Inspired by Escher’s tessellation art, I chose a V-shape tile to represent each piece of work and tessellated 455 tiles to form a timeline. This timeline shows that Escher started exploring Optical art as early as in his 20s but didn't focus on it until his 40s. His works before 40 were mostly Expressionism style or Surrealism style. In the three decades afterward, Escher focused on Optical art and all of his most famous works were published in that period.

For those who want to explore more, by hovering over each tile, a popup shows the information of the work, and a link to the data source website.