Reading

Unit 12 and CLIL

8 Escher

9
1 Read and tick the jobs that are in the text.
Sailing in the 16th century
builder architect mechanic engineer artist

art teacher shop assistant

Term 1 A treasure map
M. C. Escher was born in the Netherlands in 1898. His father was an engineer.
M. C. Escher loved drawing pictures and his art teacher taught him to make pictures
Term 2 Nonsense poems
by printing. He studied art and made prints with wood.
Escher wasn’t an architect, he was an artist.
He made pictures of buildings, impossible
Term 3 Sandybridge Island
pictures. Here is a print that he made in
1953. It is called “Relativity”.

In the picture, there are lots of stairs, and

people are walking upstairs and downstairs.
If you look at a small part of the picture, it
looks normal. But if you look at the whole
picture, you can see that the stairs are
impossible. Where is the ceiling of the
building, and where is the floor? It is
impossible to say!
Escher was a brilliant artist, but he was a
mathematician too. He made many
tessellations. In maths, a tessellation is a
picture that uses the same shape lots of
times. The shapes must fit together without
any gaps.
This picture is called “Horsemen”. Escher
made it in 1946. There are lots of men and
they are riding horses. Some are dark and
some are light. The dark horses and men are
all exactly the same. What about the light
horses and men? They are exactly the same
as the dark ones. But they are reflected.
The horses and men fit together. There aren’t any gaps. Each man’s head fits under a
horse’s neck, and each horse’s head fits next to another horse’s legs!
Escher made 448 prints and more than 2000 drawings. He died in 1972.

14 Escher PHOTOCOPIABLE © Oxford University Press | Family and Friends 2 Second edition
 Reading
and CLIL

2 Find these words in the text. Write.

1 the opposite of ‘upstairs’ = d __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

2 the top of a room = c __ __ __ __ __ __

3 the bottom of a room = f __ __ __ __

4 a space between things = g __ __

5 the opposite of ‘dark’ = l __ __ __ __

3 Match.
1 He's rinding a horse. a engineer

2 She's creating a work of art. b architect

3 He's teaching art. c horseman

4 She's designing a building. d artist

5 He's designing a machine. e art teacher

4 Read the text again and write T (true) or F (false).

1 Escher was an art teacher. ______

2 There are lots of horses in the 'Relativity' picture. ______

3 All the people in the 'Relativity' picture are going upstairs. ______

4 There aren't any gaps in a tessellation. ______

5 The dark horses and their horsemen are all the same. ______

PHOTOCOPIABLE © Oxford University Press | Family and Friends 2 Second edition Escher 15