Optical Wonderful
Notable Illusionists & Artists
Every illusion has an origin story. These are the mathematicians, psychologists, and artists whose names are attached to the tricks in the library.
Akiyoshi Kitaoka
The Japanese psychologist behind Rotating Snakes and dozens of other peripheral-drift illusions that use color and contrast alone to create the sensation of motion in a completely static image.
Op art, geometric motion illusions in fine artBridget Riley
The British painter who helped define Op Art in the 1960s, using precise repeated patterns to make still paintings seem to flicker and move.
Large-scale anamorphic installation artFelice Varini
The Swiss-born, Paris-based artist known for painting geometric shapes across entire buildings, streets, and landscapes that only resolve into a coherent form from one precise viewing point.
Pavement/chalk anamorphic artJulian Beever
The English chalk artist whose pavement drawings look three-dimensional from one exact spot and like a stretched smear from anywhere else.
Impossible architecture, tessellationsM.C. Escher
The Dutch printmaker whose impossible staircases, endless waterfalls and interlocking tessellations made visual paradox famous, with help from the Penroses.
Early impossible-object drawings, precursor to PenroseOscar Reutersvärd
The Swedish artist who drew the first known version of the impossible triangle in 1934, decades before it was independently rediscovered and formalized by the Penroses.
Penrose triangle and stairs (mathematical formalization)Roger and Lionel Penrose
The psychiatrist father and mathematician son who introduced the impossible triangle and endless staircase to science in 1958, and inspired Escher.
Surrealist double-image paintingsSalvador Dalí
The Surrealist whose double images hide one picture inside another, and whose Lincoln painting borrowed from a Scientific American article on face recognition.