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National Gallery of Art - THE COLLECTION
image of Waterfall
M.C. Escher (artist)
Dutch, 1898 - 1972
Waterfall, 1961
lithograph
image: 38.1 x 29.9 cm (15 x 11 3/4 in.) sheet: 49.7 x 40.9 cm (19 9/16 x 16 1/8 in.)
Cornelius Van S. Roosevelt Collection
All M.C. Escher works © Cordon Art-Baarn-the Netherlands. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
1982.90.12
From the Tour: M.C. Escher — Life and Work
Object 23 of 24

Escher's print illustrates the "impossible triangle" described by the British mathematician Roger Penrose in a 1958 article on visual illusion: "Here is a perspective drawing, each part of which is accepted as representing a three-dimensional, rectangular structure. The lines of the drawing are, however, connected in such a manner as to reproduce an impossibility. As the eye pursues the lines of the figure, sudden changes in the interpretation of distance of the object from the observer are necessary."

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