Art and Geometry

"Mathematicians have theoretically mapped out the regular division of a plane because this is part of crystallography. Does it therefore belong exclusively to mathematics? I do not think so …"
(Escher, in Escher, 1989, p. 93)

Tessellation was clearly Escher's primary interest - so much so that in 1958 he devoted an artist's book entirely to this subject. It was a fascination that began after he stopped producing Italian landscapes around 1937-38. Searching for ways to fill an entire sheet with recognizable and identical forms, he studied the laws of geometry and drew inspiration from Moorish mosaics and articles on crystallography.