''House of Stairs'' is a

lithograph Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the miscibility, immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by ...

print by the Dutch artist

M. C. Escher Maurits Cornelis Escher (; ; 17 June 1898 – 27 March 1972) was a Dutch graphic artist who made woodcuts, lithography, lithographs, and mezzotints, many of which were Mathematics and art, inspired by mathematics. Despite wide popular int ...

first printed in November 1951. This print measures . It depicts the interior of a tall structure crisscrossed with stairs and doorways. A total of 46 '' wentelteefje'' (imaginary creatures created by Escher) are crawling on the stairs. The ''wentelteefje'' has a long, armored body with six legs,

humanoid A humanoid (; from English ''human'' and '' -oid'' "resembling") is a non-human entity with human form or characteristics. By the 20th century, the term came to describe fossils which were morphologically similar, but not identical, to those of ...

feet, a parrot-like beak and eyes on stalks. Some are seen to roll in through doors, wound in a wheel shape and then unroll to crawl up the stairs, while others crawl down stairs and wind up to roll out. The ''wentelteefje'' first appeared earlier the same month in the lithograph '' Curl-up''. Later that month, ''House of Stairs'' was extended to a vertical length of in a print titled ''House of Stairs II'' by repeating and mirroring some of the architecture and creatures.

References

Sources

* {{DEFAULTSORT:House Of Stairs Works by M. C. Escher 1951 prints