LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Impossible Object: Impossible Objects
built 276 days ago
The first consciously constructed impossible object is the impossible tribar construction (see the figure below). The Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd invented it in 1934, and in 1956 it was reinvented independently by the English mathematician Sir Roger Penrose and his father. Their result was published two years later, when the famous picture Belvédère of the Dutch graphic art designer M.C. Escher was presented. Here a boy dressed in medieval style plays with aimpossible cube (figure on the right).
Source:
The Penrose triangle... known as the tribar is an impossible object. It was first created by the Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd in 1934. The mathematician Roger Penrose independently invented and popularised it in the 1950s, describing it as "impossibility in its purest form". It features prominently in the works of artist M. C. Escher, whose earlier depictions of impossible objects partly inspired it.
Source:
M.C.Escher's lithograph "Belvedere" is a well-known example of an impossible object. When viewed from a fixed spatial position, the elements in such two-dimensional images yield alignments and congruences that give rise to the illusion. Until now, it has been impossible to change the viewpoint when viewing impossible objects. "Belvedere" in this video is the first virtual construction in which an impossible object can be viewed from multiple viewpoints in 3-dimensional space.
Source:
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 ... 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.
Source:
The Moebius ring, of course, is not an impossible object, so no great feat there to create it as a real object. In fact, it's super simple: Take a strip of paper. Twist one end of it 180 degrees so the opposite side faces up. Tape the two ends of the strip together. That's it. You've just created a one-sided object. To prove it, take a pen and trace the same trail around it that Escher's ants make.
Source:
Probably the first intentionally painted impossible object was the gallows in Pieter Breughels canvas The magpie on the gallows of 1568 (Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, left a detail). It is an impossible 4-bar construction. Supposedly Breughel rather played with the perspective and intended to generate a surreal atmosphere than to represent a spatial object.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Impossible Objects