Portrait of the Artist's Wife with Veil

The internationally-renowned graphic artist Samuel Mesquita lived and died with a much more modest reputation than he now enjoys. He was a Sephardic Jew in Amsterdam whose works were rejected by the Rijksacademie. He tried to make his way as an architect, but found himself drawn back to the arts of printmaking and drawing in particular. He trained the young MC Escher, but Mesquita’s career was cut short. He was forced with his wife and only son to Auschwitz after the German invasion, and was murdered there. Escher managed to save some of the sketches and other works Mesquita had left behind, but it was largely the following generations that discovered Mesquita’s enormous talent.