Chess Art
Howdy! It's The Chess Friends!
This week we are celebrating a happy birthday to Q&A Chess: Tournament Edition, which was released on September 17th, 2025! What a journey it has been! Since then, we have published 45 blogs, contributed 13 articles to the Northwest Chess magazine, and played lots of chess games!
Our chess writing took us to different fields: math and music, sport and science, and animals and art!
Since chess and art are so connected, we've explored their intersection in several past blogs including: Eight Queens + Knight's Tour = Chess Math, Chess: Art, Science, or Sport?, Puzzle Power!, and Three Chess Friends, A Century Apart.
Chess players are artists. They are inspired to create art on the board just as artists are inspired by chess to create masterpieces through their art. Patterns, geometry, creativity, and strategy are core to both chess and art. Let's explore how these art ideas evolved through time.
Chess in the Early Modern Period: Strategy, Beauty, Society
The Myth Sarang
Between 1500 and 1800, chess became much more than a board game in Europe. People saw it as a test of intelligence, a symbol of self-control, a subject for paintings and poems, and a luxury object for the wealthy. At Renaissance courts, chess showed that someone could think carefully and plan ahead. Artists used it to show family life, romance, competition, and social status. Writers compared chess to war, love, and political struggle.
Over these three centuries, chess brought together strategy, imagination, and art.
One important person in this story was Luca Pacioli, an Italian mathematician, Franciscan friar, and a friend of the greatest artist of all time, Leonardo da Vinci.
Around 1500, Pacioli wrote a Latin manuscript called De ludo scachorum, meaning "On the Game of Chess." It was also called Schifanoia, or "The Boredom Dodger." The manuscript included more than 100 chess problems. Some problems used old rules of chess, while others used rules closer to the modern ones, making the book especially important because it reflects how chess was changing during Pacioli’s lifetime.
Pacioli treated chess as something connected to math and visual design. A chess problem is not only about finding the best move. It is also like a carefully planned picture. Every piece has a purpose, every square matters, and the player has to notice patterns in the position. Even when a chessboard looks confusing, there is usually an idea hidden inside it.
The manuscript is also known for its beautiful drawings of chess pieces in red and black. It has 114 chess diagrams, and the pieces look surprisingly elegant and modern for their time. Some historians believe Leonardo da Vinci may have helped create the drawings, although there is no final proof.
The idea is possible because Pacioli and Leonardo worked together closely. Leonardo had already made illustrations for Pacioli’s book De divina proportione, which explored math, shape, and proportion. Whether or not Leonardo drew the chess pieces himself, the connection shows how closely chess, art, and mathematics were linked in the Renaissance.
The pieces in De ludo scachorum do not look like simple game symbols. They seem carefully shaped, almost like small sculptures. Their design suggests that chess could be beautiful as well as logical.
Chess as a Picture of Society
Artists often used chess to tell stories about people. A chess game could show that someone was educated, patient, and clever. But it could also show rivalry, romance, or a struggle for control.
A good example is Liberale da Verona’s The Chess Players, painted in the late 1400s. It shows a young man and woman playing chess. The woman appears close to losing. In Renaissance love stories, chess was often connected with courtship. The game allowed a man and woman to sit across from each other, watch each other closely, and spend time together in a socially acceptable way.
Chess also reflected the social order of the time. Its pieces represented a small society:
The king stood for political power.
The queen showed influence and authority.
Bishops, knights, and rooks represented important social and military roles.
Pawns represented ordinary people.
This made chess useful for artists who wanted to show ideas about rank, power, and leadership.
Sofonisba Anguissola’s 1555 painting The Game of Chess gives a different view. It shows Anguissola’s sisters playing chess outdoors while an older woman watches them. Instead of showing chess only as a game connected to war or male power, the painting presents it as part of family life and education.
The girls are not just sitting in the background. They are active, focused players. The painting suggests that chess could show intelligence, memory, confidence, and personality. It also reminds us that women and girls could be part of chess culture, even if most famous chess writing of the period focused on men.
Chess also appeared in literature. In 1527, the Italian writer Marco Girolamo Vida wrote a Latin poem called Scacchia ludus, or “The Game of Chess.” In the poem, the gods Apollo and Mercury play chess on Mount Olympus.
By making gods play chess, Vida turned the game into something grand and heroic. The match is like a battle, but it is fought with thought instead of weapons. The players win through planning, sacrifice, patience, and clever moves.
This idea matched an important Renaissance belief: intelligence could be heroic. A strong chess move could be compared to a military plan, but it did not require physical violence. Instead, it required concentration and imagination.
Chess was also a useful symbol for love. Writers had connected chess and romance long before the Renaissance, and that idea continued during this period. The back-and-forth nature of a game made chess a good way to describe relationships.
In this time period, chess was a meeting point between many parts of culture, from Pacioli’s carefully arranged problems to visual art in illustrated manuscripts and paintings. Chess meant many different things at once. It could be a game, a lesson in strategy, a symbol of romance or a picture of society. The chessboard may have been small, but it gave artists and writers the opportunity to explore some very large ideas including power and intelligence. Now let's turn it over to The Man Benji, who'll discuss perhaps the greatest Chess Artist of all time!
The Chess and Art of Marcel Duchamp
The Man Benji
In the Late Modern Period, the one artist who championed chess the most and who valued the game not just for its reflection of life, power, and wisdom was Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968).
Marcel was a French-American artist and chess player. He looked beyond what happened on the board and painted chess thoughts as if they were tangible things. In 1952, he famously said:
“I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players,
all chess players are artists.”
What led Marcel Duchamp to come to such conclusion?
Marcel learned chess from his older brothers when he was 13 years old. At the same time, he created his first painting. And thus, his lifelong chess-art journey began!
As Marcel was searching for his own style in art, he used chess as his subject, and it’s only natural that the painting that brought him early success at a prestigious exhibit was “The Chess Game.” Now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, it follows a somewhat traditional art style and shows his two brothers concentrating hard on a chess game while their wives relax in the home garden. Or maybe they are bored and want to play too. You can view the painting here:
A year later, perhaps not liking how the style of that painting captured the essence of a chess game, Marcel made another painting of his brothers playing chess, calling it “The Portrait of Chess Players.” He was trying to depict not only the chess players deep in the game but also all the hidden brain activity, so he turned to Cubism, which is an art style where you take an image and cut it into many geometric shapes to reassemble it back in an abstract form.
You can view the painting in the Philadelphia Museum of Art here:
Many people were confused at that time. Some even criticized, saying it wasn’t a real cubist painting. Where are the chess players? Where are the pieces and the board?
Duchamp saw it differently, though, because he saw beyond what the eyes can see: the true beauty of chess. He said: “In chess there are some extremely beautiful things in the domain of movement, but not in the visual domain. It’s the imagining of the movement or the gesture that makes the beauty, in this case. It’s completely in one’s gray matter.”
Duchamp captured the player’s minds during the game, showing that inside, there are so many thoughts happening. It seemed to me that he wasn’t just trying to make beautiful art, but was also inspiring the viewer to find and understand why chess itself is beautiful.
Not wanting to listen to the critics, Duchamp abandoned the established art circles to be an independent artist. In 1913, he asked a simple question,
“Can anything be art?”
Only it was not a simple question. It was a big question that people still argue about today. Who says this thing is art and that thing is not? Can the beauty of an everyday object be art? Can a banana duct-taped to a wall be art?
To illustrate his point, Marcel took a wheel and attached it to a stool. And so, The Upside-Down Bicycle Wheel was created, what was later collectively called “readymade.”
Another readymade he kept in his apartment in New York (where he moved from France to avoid wartime in Europe) was a coatrack nailed to the floor, meant so people would trip while walking around. He gave it a cheeky chess name Trébuchet.
Next, in 1917, he bought a urinal, signed his pseudonym on it, called it the Fountain, and submitted it for an art exhibit. The art committee was flabbergasted. Some people even lost their sleep. Was he being serious here? The artwork was rejected, but it accomplished a lot: it brought attention to the important question:
What is art?
This question became part of another art movement called Dada, or Dadaism that defied norms and logic, oftentimes messing with or finding humor in normal things. In a way, it was an act of rebellion against political systems that justified World War I. If something so horrible and illogical like a war happens, why does art have to stay logical?
While people kept pondering about the question of art, Marcel removed himself from the discussion, and shifted his focus to chess. He asked:
“Why isn’t my chess playing an art activity? [...] with chess one creates beautiful problems, and that beauty is made with the head and hands.”
In New York, he joined the Marshall Chess Club, studying chess late into the night. He had one goal only in mind: to become a professional chess player. Marcel latched onto it, and didn’t let it go! He thought chess, he saw chess, he slept chess, he studied chess theory in books, he looked at Nimzowitsch’s ideas, and admired Capablanca’s play. Soon, he achieved his goal!
After many years of dedicated training, in 1923, he played in the National Belgium Tournament, where he finished third with 7/9, winning a nice attacking game against Edgar Colle.
Duchamp became one of the top chess players in France, playing for his country in four Chess Olympiads!
Many people characterized Duchamp as cautious, because he was a weaker player going against more skilled people at the international events, and probably he didn’t want to recklessly attack and let his team down. But his friend IM Edward Lasker (not to be confused with World Champion Emanuel Lasker), who he played many casual games with, described Duchamp as an attacking player, one who took all the calculated risks to win. The game that follows is a good example of his tactical vision.
In the year 1929, in Paris, Duchamp played an interesting game against Vera Menchik, the first official Women’s World Chess Champion (who we talked about in our blog before). Here, on move 20, he executed a sweet tactic which won two pawns, entering a winning endgame!
Can you find the move Duchamp played? The answer:
Qxh6+!! Black’s only move is ... Kxh6, and then White will play Nxf7+, getting the queen back next move while winning two pawns.
This game still ended in a draw, as Duchamp let Menchik get too much counterplay in the rook and pawn endgame, but it’s understandable, since those are tricky, especially against World Champions!
Later in life, Duchamp stopped competitive chess, but still played daily at the Marshall Chess Club, where he also met Bobby Fischer. Wanting to make the game more accessible for others, and to make lives easier for professional chess players, Duchamp raised money for the American Chess Foundation, an organization that preceded the United State Chess Federation (USCF), asking his artist friends to make artwork for sale to benefit chess in the USA.
One of his friends was the most eccentric artist, with the biggest imagination and best mustache—Salvador Dalí!
Not being a chess player himself, Dalí still found beauty in chess, specifically in the way people moved the chess pieces with their hands. So, he decided to make a chess set and dedicate it to his friend Marcel, casting the chess pieces from the forms based on his own and his wife Gala’s fingers. Rooks were cast from salt and pepper shakers.
Check it out here:
Imagine if Gotham Chess plays on that set. Instead of saying “Sacrifice the RO-O-OK,” he would say “Sacrifice the SA-A-A-A-ALT!”
Returning to art, Duchamp organized many events that blended chess and art, designing chess sets, promotional material, and supporting others.
Marcel Duchamp was an artist who painted the art of chess, and was a chess player who played the game of art, and I’m glad I got to learn about him and share with you. If you happen to be in Philadelphia, make sure to visit the Art Museum for a special exhibit on Marcel Duchamp, opening next month:
Shout out to these references I used to write this blog:
1) The book Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess by Francis M. Naumann, Bradley Bailey, Jennifer Shahade (2009)
2) The Smithsonian Magazine for an explanation about Dadaism: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/dada-115169154/
3) The chess.com blogger AstroTheoretical_Physics who wrote an amazing blog about Marcel: https://www.chess.com/blog/IntriguingChessStories/how-a-surrealist-sketched-the-chess-squares
4) The collection of Marcel Duchamp’s chess games: https://www.chessgames.com/player/marcel_duchamp.html
Now let’s turn to The Legend Vivaan for more contemporary chess artists!
1900 to Present: Bending the Mind through Illusion
The Legend Vivaan
When it comes to 20th century chess art, perhaps the most notable artist is the great Dutch woodcut artist M.C. Escher, whose work was featured in the legendary book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter.
Escher’s Metamorphosis II showcases chessboards in multiple places and several repeating fractal patterns with awesome shapes including insects, birds, and fish. If you look on the bottom left, you will see a fascinating chessboard that appears folded in various ways, incredible texturing in a woodcut! Escher uses illusions in awesome ways to make it seem like his woodcuts are moving! So cool!
This is the chess position that appears on the bottom left. It is a lovely smother mate. Do you see it? White is forced to play Rxg1 which leaves the Knight on g4 free to play Nf2#! Fun fact: I really enjoyed finding smother mates when I was three years old!
If you’re a Caro Kann player with Black, maybe the fastest growing opening in popularity right now, be careful of the smother mate trap! I’ve beat my dad with it! It goes 1. e4 c6, 2. Nc3 d5, 3. Nf3 dxe4, 4. Nxe4 Nd7, 5. Qe2 Nc6, arriving at the position below.
Do you see the beautiful mate in one?! Checkmate in six from the starting position!
You’re right! It’s Nd6#.
Another wonderful chess artwork of the 20th century is by Swiss artist Sandro Del-Prete, namely The Warped Chessboard.
Does the chessboard curve in the middle? Is it flat? Is the board right side up or upside down? Are the pieces right side up or upside down? How do the ladders work? This is an incredible optical illusion! It’s so confusing that I don’t even know what to say! That’s art! You have to come up with your own interpretation. It’s almost like the black pieces have their own chess board on top and the white pieces have their own chess board on the bottom, but it’s the same board! Perspective is so trippy! Did you notice how part of the board is on a table and the other part is floating in the sky? What?!
Now let's do something a little different: TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE! Here are some multiple-choice questions to see how closely you've been reading!
Who created De ludo scachorum?
a. DaVinci
b. Liberale
c. Pacioli
d. Michaelangelo
Which chess piece represented influence and authority?
a. King
b. Queen
c. Rook
d. Pawn
What was depicted in Duchamp's first painting that got accepted for an exhibit?
a. A urinal
b. Lily pads
c. His brothers playing chess
d. An upside-down bicycle
What object did Duchamp nail to the floor and call it the readymade Trébuchet?
a. A shoe
b. A coat rack
c. A chessboard
d. A mold of Dalí's mustache
What kind of checkmate is featured in Escher’s Metamorphosis II?
a. Back rank
b. Rook roll
c. Pie in the face
d. Smother
Which white piece has made it on to black’s side in the sky in Del Prete’s The Warped Chessboard?
a. Rook
b. Bishop
c. Knight
d. Queen
Email your answers to chessfriendsbooks@gmail.com and maybe you'll get a shoutout in a future blog!
Three Cheers, Fellow Future Master Chess Friends!
The Man Benji, The Myth Sarang, The Legend Vivaan
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