The Impossible Stairs, Surreal Illusions in Gold collection — gold wall art by RAGANA Design
The Impossible Stairs — framed on a wall
The Impossible Stairs — detail
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SURREAL ILLUSIONS IN GOLD

The Impossible Stairs

Op Art in Gold

Golden stairs climb, turn and climb again — and somehow end where they began. Small figures walk the loop on deep midnight blue, lit by a warm golden glow.

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Mysterious and elegant, a conversation piece. Lovely in a stairwell, a hallway, a study or a modern living room.

Digital downloadPrinted & framed →
Buy · €9.99
  • Printable digital download, around 9,000 px on the long edge
  • Samsung Frame TV version included (3840 × 2160)
  • Signed licence certificate (PDF) — see it
  • Sent by e-mail the moment you pay — nothing is shipped

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Op Art in Gold: The Golden Vortex, The Breathing Sphere & The Impossible Stairs framed side by side – set of 3 printable wall art by RAGANA Design
Set of 3 · Op Art in Gold

This work together with The Golden Vortex and The Breathing Sphere — three hypnotic optical illusions in gold leaf and black — a vortex, a swelling sphere and a staircase that never ends.

Buy all three · €19.99
Separately 3 × €9.99 = €29.97
Commercial licence for one venue: €199.99 for all three →
Prefer it printed & framed?Fine-art print, framed or canvas · from €39→See it on your wall
Details
  • Printable digital download, around 9,000 px on the long edge
  • The commercial licence covers hotels, offices, restaurants and public spaces
  • Print it yourself at any size, on metal, acrylic, glass or fine-art paper
On a Samsung Frame TV

Every download also includes a 3840 × 2160 file made for the Samsung Frame and other art-mode TVs: the whole work, uncropped, on a quiet mat in a colour taken from the picture. Send it to the TV with the SmartThings app and show it in Art Mode. All Frame TV art →

The Impossible Stairs — Samsung Frame TV art, 3840 × 2160
How large can I print it?

The file is around 9,000 px on the long edge. That prints crisply to about 75 cm on the long edge at gallery quality, and to 130–170 cm at the distance you look at a picture over furniture. Sizes, paper and framing, in detail →

Which paper or surface?

Gold on dark grounds wants a matte or satin fine-art paper (200–310 gsm), or aluminium for humid rooms; glossy photo paper turns the black into a mirror. The pale works also take satin and baryta papers.

Which licence do I need?

Personal (€9.99) covers your own home and gifts. Any business or space open to the public — a spa, clinic, hotel, office, restaurant — needs the commercial licence (€99.99, one venue, no renewal). The venue guide →

How big, and how high, on my wall?

Width of the furniture beneath divided by 1.618; centre of the picture at 150 cm from the floor. How to hang wall art using the golden ratio →

About this work

Golden stairs climb, turn and climb again, and somehow end where they began. Small figures walk the loop on a deep midnight blue ground, lit by a warm golden glow. Each flight looks reasonable on its own. Only when you follow the whole circuit does the trick reveal itself, and then it is hard to look away.

The impossible staircase was described by the psychiatrist Lionel Penrose and his son, the mathematician Roger Penrose, in a paper published in 1958. It shows four flights of stairs that seem to rise continuously while forming a closed loop. M. C. Escher turned the idea into his lithograph Ascending and Descending in 1960, with figures walking the stairs forever. The Impossible Stairs follows that tradition in gold and midnight blue. It plays with the way the eye trusts each single step and loses track of the whole.

Mysterious and elegant, it is a natural conversation piece. In a stairwell it becomes a quiet joke, and it also suits a hallway, a study or a modern living room with navy, charcoal or white walls. In the Op Art in Gold set, it hangs with The Golden Vortex and The Breathing Sphere. The file prints sharply to roughly 75 cm on the long edge at 300 dpi.

More from Surreal Illusions in Gold

See the whole collection →

FURTHER READING
What is op art? Optical illusion art, explainedGuideWhat is surrealism? Surreal art, explainedGuideGold and darkness: why quiet rooms need contrastJournal