Maurits Cornelis Escher was born in Leeuwarden, in Holland, on 17 June 1898. His first graphic work, a linoleum cut made of his engineer father, was done when he was eighteen. From 1919 to 1922 he attended the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem (that's spelt with 2 `a's, not one), where he was heavily influenced by his mentor, S.~Jessurun de Mesquita.
Escher moved to Rome in 1923, and married Jetta Umiker, the daughter of a Swiss industrialist, the following year. By this time Escher was already mounting one-man art exhibitions. In 1936, he visited the Alhambra - an ancient Moorish palace in Granada, whose walls are covered with intricate geometrical designs - and a mosque in Cordoba, and these experiences in Spain caused him to move from landscapes to `mental imagery', the graphic works and tilings. By 1940, he was back in Holland, having spent some years in Switzerland and Belgium. In 1946 he organized a memorial exhibition in honor of Mesquita, who had never been seen again after he was arrested by the Nazis in 1944.
Unlike several artists before him, Escher achieved fame during his lifetime. He published (well-received) books, articles on him appeared in newspapers and magazines, famous universities like M.I.T. invited him to give lectures, and his works sold faster than he could produce them. He received several awards, including a knighthood. He met several mathematical researchers interested in the symmetry (and the asymmetry) of nature, such as Bruno Ernst and Roger Penrose. It was not just the mathematicians though - he gave a lecture in conjunction with the Congress of the International Union of Crystallography in 1960.
But his health was not ideal. In 1962 he was admitted to hospital for an emergency operation which he took a long time to recover from. He had further operations in 1964 and 1970. Jetta left him in in 1968 and four years later, on 27 March 1972, Escher died in hospital. Books on and by him (posthumously) continue to be published, most notably the 1979 work ``Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid' by Douglas Hofstadter, which won the Pulitzer Prize. He has become a cult figure among Mathematicians and scientists, and Escher posters, jigsaws, calendars and tee-shirts abound. For example this site specializes in Escher products and also has plenty of (free) info on Escher.