Nov 03, 2022 - Sale 2620

Sale 2620 - Lot 479

Price Realized: $ 15,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 20,000
MAURITS C. ESCHER
Contrast (Order and Chaos).

Lithograph, 1950. 280x280 mm; 11x11 inches, full margins. Signed in pencil, lower left. A very good impression of this extremely scarce lithograph.

We have found only seven other impressions at auction in the past 30 years.

In the center of Contrast (Order and Chaos) is a perfectly symmetrical spatial figure: an almost transparent stellated dodecahedron that has been merged with a glass sphere. The object is surrounded by an assortment of broken and otherwise disorderly objects. The title is self-explanatory: the crystal represents order and discipline, whereas the objects around it symbolize chaos. In retrospect, perhaps Escher was sensing something when he made this lithograph. His fame began to soar in the 1950s, as would the chaos that fame brought his way. Bool 366.