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We look down onto a checkerboard countryside in this horizontal woodcut print. The landscape is bright daylight to our left and transitions to nighttime to our right. As it does so, the checkerboard of the fields morphs into geese flying across the sky, close to us. On the left half, black birds fly westward against a white sky. On the right half, white birds fly eastward against a black sky. The landscape below is mirrored so each has a town on the banks of an inward-curving river. The artist signed the print in the upper right corner with conjoined, blocky letters “MCE” with “II-38” below.

M.C. Escher

Day and Night, 1938

Not on View

Medium

woodcut in black and gray, printed from two blocks

Dimensions

image: 39.2 x 67.6 cm (15 7/16 x 26 5/8 in.)

sheet: 49.5 x 77.3 cm (19 1/2 x 30 7/16 in.)

Credit Line

Cornelius Van S. Roosevelt Collection

Catalogue Raisonné

Bool 1981, no. 303

Accession Number

1974.28.8

Artists / Makers

M.C. Escher (artist) Dutch, 1898 - 1972

Image Use

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Copyright

Exhibition History

1987: Graphic Survey Show, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., November 1987.

1995: M.C. Escher: Landscape to Mindscape, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1995-1996. p.18, no.17.

1997: M.C. Escher: A Centennial Tribute, National Gallery of Art, Washington; San Diego Museum of Art; The Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, 1997-1999.

2000: "M.C. Escher", Knoxville Museum of Art, 2000.

Bibliography

1981: Bool, F.H. et al. M.C. Escher: His Life and Complete Graphic Work. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1981; English-language edition, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1982.

1987: Schattschneider 1987, p.26.