Drawing Hands is a lithograph

Lithography

Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...

 by the Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 artist M. C. Escher

M. C. Escher

Maurits Cornelis Escher , usually referred to as M. C. Escher , was a Dutch graphic artist. He is known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints...

 first printed in January 1948. It depicts a sheet of paper out of which, from wrists that remain flat on the page, two hands rise, facing each other and in the paradox

Paradox

Similar to Circular reasoning, A paradox is a seemingly true statement or group of statements that lead to a contradiction or a situation which seems to defy logic or intuition...

ical act of drawing one another into existence. Although Escher used paradoxes in his works often, this is one of the most obvious examples.
It is referenced in the book Gödel, Escher, Bach

Gödel, Escher, Bach

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is a book by Douglas Hofstadter, described by his publishing company as "a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll"....

by Douglas Hofstadter

Douglas Hofstadter

Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics...

, who calls it an example of a strange loop

Strange loop

A strange loop arises when, by moving up or down through a hierarchical system, one finds oneself back where one started.Strange loops may involve self-reference and paradox...

.

Sources

• Locher, J.L. (2000). The Magic of M. C. Escher. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN 0-8109-6720-0.