Letters full of admiration

In Reptiles , Escher brings one of his tessellations to life, as a three-dimensional reptile emerges from an open sketchbook containing two-dimensional images of reptiles. The creature climbs onto a book, follows the path of its life, pauses for breath on a dodecahedron, and then returns to the book, where it becomes a two-dimensional drawing once more. This cycle was interpreted by some, during Escher’s own lifetime, as a reference to reincarnation. The more well known his work became, the more people wrote to him with such ideas about his work. His fame grew rapidly after the major retrospective of his work at the Haags Gemeentemuseum (now: Kunstmuseum Den Haag) in 1968 and an article by journalist Bibeb published in the Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland that same year.