>>11509980FPWP.
>>11509934The best book on Escher is M.C. Escher: His Life and Complete Graphic Work. Read that, OP. It contains a biography of the artist, a representative catalogue raisonne of his life's work (although the reproductions are somewhat small), and the biography also details Escher's conscious decision to make mathematical art circa 1937 (or was it 1927?) (IIRC) after he visited the Alhambra. Escher was always careful to emphasize that he was not a mathematician, and the mathematical properties of his art have been explained in fair detail by himself and friendly mathematicians. Escher himself explained the three basic operations of his (Euclidian) plane-filling illustrations, translation, rotation and reflection (called "glide reflexion"), identifying Euclidian motions in the plane. Escher also explained his method of perturbing square, hexagonal and triangular lattices to produce recognizable figures. Escher has explained that birds and fish were common subjects because their lines lent themselves well to this procedure.
