OAKLAND, CALIF. — Measuring 153¼ inches long, M.C. Escher’s “Metamorphosis II” took $98,400 in Clars Auction Gallery’s September 14-15 sale, selling to a private collector. The woodcut was printed from 20 blocks on three combined sheets and was signed and dated in the plate. Executed in 1939/40, the work featured black, green and brown hues and was framed in one continuous line. The image segued from text to checkerboard to lizards to hexagons to honeycombs to bees to butterflies to fish to birds to blocks to a rising city to a three-dimensional chess game and back to a checkerboard to text.

“As a whole, the sale was one of the best we’ve had all year,” Clars chief executive officer, president and fine art director Rick Unruh said. The whole sale would go on to produce more than $2 million.

According to Clars, “Upon his return to Holland from Belgium in 1939, Escher created a series of motifs for regular division of the plane to form a continuous pictorial story through metamorphosis and a few associations of ideas, ending in a memory of Italy (the view of Atrani) and one of Chateau-d’Oex (the chessboard) and finally in a pattern identical to that at the start of the print, thus suggesting a complete cycle. The work is a greater expansion in the concept of tessellated patterns working to become an altogether different pattern, which Escher explored in ‘Metamorphosis I,’ 1937.”

According to the Artnet price database, this is the third highest result for this work from the artist.

For more information, www.clars.com or 510-428-0100.