?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 20,000
MAURITS C. ESCHER Stars.
Wood engraving, 1948. 320x260 mm; 12 1/2x10 1/4 inches, wide margins. Signed and inscribed "eigendruck" in pencil, lower margin. A very good impression of this extremely scarce print.
We have found only 16 other impressions at auction in the past 30 years.
The compound of three octahedra (a polyhedron with eight faces) used for the central cage in Stars had been studied before in mathematics, and Escher (1898-1972) likely learned of it from the book Vielecke und Vielflache by Max Brückner. Escher used similar compound polyhedral forms in several other works, including Crystal1947, Study for Stars, 1948, Double Planetoid, 1949 and Waterfall, 1961.
The design for Stars was likely influenced by Escher's own interest in both geometry and astronomy, by a long history of using geometric forms to model the heavens, and by a drawing style used by Leonardo da Vinci. Commentators have interpreted the cage's compound shape as a reference to double and triple stars in astronomy, or to twinned crystals in crystallography. The image contrasts the celestial order of its polyhedral shapes with the more chaotic forms of biology. Bool 359.
