Historically, tessellation has served as a bridge between art and mathematics—from the intricate tilework of Islamic architecture to the optical experiments of M.C. Escher and the perceptual investigations of Op Art pioneers like Victor Vasarely. A longer, and more comprehensive overview of this form is available at https://www.artsindia.com/blogs/news/tessellation-in-art
This article is narrowly focused on Penrose Tiling #1 and Penrose Tiling #2, two works by Amy Ione, which are situated within this lineage, even as they remain distinctly contemporary in their painterly execution and conceptual rigor.
Islamic Geometry and Pre-Modern Tessellations
In medieval Islamic art, for example, we see interlocking star-polygons and grid patterns . These established a precedent for non-figurative, rule-driven geometry. While historically these patterns were periodic (repeating), like the Penrose Tiling paintings, the pre-modern works conveyed a spirit of infinite extension and logical beauty. They also exemplified a fascination with symmetry, repetition, and pattern-logic.
M.C. Escher and 20th-Century Developments
Probably the best known recent tessellation art is that of M.C Escher. His twentieth century explorations of tessellations and impossible spaces opened the door for the merger of mathematics and art as manifest today. Although Escher’s tessellations are typically periodic and figurative, his investigations into interlocking shapes, perceptual reversals, and visual paradoxes create a conceptual bridge to Amy Ione’s Penrose Tiling #1and Penrose Tiling #2 paintings. Indeed, Escher was a major influence on Amy Ione’s earliest art.
Op Art, Geometric Abstraction, Penrose Tiling
Penrose Tiling #1 and Penrose Tiling #2 similarly align with 1960s Op Art, such as Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, and later geometric abstractionists who harnessed repetition, color modulation, and optical instability. The Penrose tiling concept also had a broad appeal. In the 1970s, mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose was investigating aperiodic tiling. Tiling covering of the plane by non-overlapping polygons or other shapes is aperiodic if it does not contain arbitrarily large periodic regions or patches.
Penrose’s investigations are noted in the Penrose Tiling name. On a larger scale, the entry of the concept and design into both the cultural and mathematical lexicon coincided with a growing interest in systems-based art, algorithmic pattern, and mathematically informed aesthetics.
Perceptually, Penrose Tiling #1 and Penrose Tiling #2 offer a viable entry point for thinking about this history and adding color (both color gradations and temperature), rhythm, perceptual drift, and image variations to our discussions of tessellation design.
More specifically, Penrose Tiling #1 presents a warm, high-contrast palette with strong reds, blacks, mid-blues, and pale neutrals. The red units generate a pulsating rhythm that pushes forward spatially, while the blue and gray facets recede. This warm–cool oscillation gives the geometry a flickering, almost kinetic property reminiscent of Op Art’s interest in perceptual instability. The saturation level is high overall, creating sharper transitions between facets of each rhombic unit, which makes the eye jump more rapidly across the surface. The color gradations are less about smooth shifts. Contrasts challenge the viewer to investigate further.
At first glance, Penrose #2 appears less angular than Penrose Tiling #1 . This is due to its more tonally cohesive form. The light pinks, muted blues, soft grays, and desaturated blacks form a gentler visual field. In this work, color serves as a mediator rather than a defining force. Gradations are quieter and more atmospheric, producing a sense of slow diffusion across the surface instead of the assertive optical beats seen in #1. The subdued palette and its square shape, enhances depth. At the same time, the tiles appear to drift into one another, producing a serene, quilt-like continuity. Thus, #2 is a more meditative piece . Whereas Penrose Tiling #1 is bright and syncopated, #2 is contemplative and spatially softer.
Penrose Tiling #1 and Penrose Tiling #2 align with the lineage described above and are separate from it. They are defined by their retention of distinct painterly characteristics: slight tonal modulations, intuitive palette decisions, and compositional sensitivity . These elements keep them grounded in the tactile and process. By choice, they are not purely algorithmic and/or geometric formulation.
All in all, both of these paintings challenge viewers to reconsider the boundaries between pattern, perception, meaning, mathematical inquiry, ornament and design–as well as perceptual art experimentation–within the tesselation tradition.