Impossible Objects - History

History

Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd was the first to deliberately design many impossible objects. He has been called "the father of impossible figures". In 1934 he drew the Penrose triangle, some years before the Penroses. In Reutersvärd's version the sides of the triangle are broken up into cubes.

In 1956, British psychiatrist Lionel Penrose and his son, mathematician Roger Penrose, submitted a short article to the British Journal of Psychology titled "Impossible Objects: A Special Type of Visual Illusion". This was illustrated with the Penrose triangle and Penrose stairs. The article referred to Escher, whose work had sparked their interest in the subject, but not Reutersvärd, of whom they were unaware. The article was only published in 1958.

From the 1930s onwards Dutch artist M.C. Escher produced many drawings featuring paradoxes of perspective gradually working towards impossible objects. In 1957 he produced his first drawing containing a true impossible object: Cube with Magic Ribbons. He produced many further drawings featuring impossible objects, sometimes with the entire drawing being an undecidable figure. His work did much to draw the attention of the public to impossible objects. Some contemporary artists are also experimenting with impossible figures, for example, Jos de Mey, Shigeo Fukuda, Sandro del Prete, István Orosz (Utisz), Guido Moretti, Tamás F. Farkas and Mathieu Hamaekers.