Framed Art
Last Cigarette: M.C. Escher’s 1917 Death Head ‘Smoker’
Framed M.C. Escher skull-and-cigarette print from a later anti-tobacco campaign, presented in fine black steel at 20 x 28 inches.
Framed Art
$1,500
ONE AVAILABLE
Shipping and handling are included in the purchase price.
Piece Details
This is the only available piece. Once purchased, it will no longer be offered in the Delickedly storefront.
Offered only after review for originality, condition, presentation, and alignment with the Delickedly quality standard.
Last Cigarette: M.C. Escher’s 1917 Death Head ‘Smoker’
In the early 20th Century, Dutch graphic artist Maurits Cornelius Escher began making a name for himself as a very promising illustrator whose impressive woodcuts, lithographs and mezzotints dazzled much of the public.
A particular twist to much of Escher’s work was his obsession with mathematics and associated realms of geometry, symmetry and crystallography, which is why this very early hand-drawn illustration by Escher when he was 19-years-old stand out as something of a unique piece in his canon.
The expressionist image, entitled ‘Skull with Cigarette,’ features a human skull sporting a fine top hat of the era and a smoke dangling from its mouth. Early interpretations of the work pointed to its allusion to the inevitability of death (the top hat an indication of being dressed to the nines for the occasion and the smoke a cavalier last cigarette), but by the 1980s the image was briefly seized by a graphic artist who attached a Surgeon General’s Warning beneath it and used it as part of an anti-tobacco campaign, from which this original print comes.
Framed in fine black steel.
Dimensions: Twenty inches horizontally, Twenty-eight inches vertically (20 x 28”)
Condition: Excellent/Mint
