Alphonse Mucha – Czech Artist

Dec. 11, 2010 - PRLog -- Alphonse Mucha – Czech Artist

Alphonse Maria Mucha, (July 24, 1860- July 14, 1939), was an unusually talented and gifted Czech Art Nouveau Decorative artist and painter. His 150th birthday has been celebrated with a Google Doodle, a gift from Google. This can be seen on Google on Google Doodle.
Mucha was most famous for his unorthodox and unique style of paintings, designs advertisements, and illustrations; mostly based on women. He is credited as the father of the Parisian Art Nouveau movement. Works of other Artists from that era show le style Mucha was, indeed, credit worthy. First denounced by Hitler, Mucha's Slav works were greatly affected and suppressed behind the Iron Curtain for many decades. His true virtuosity and appreciation is just now just beginning to surface.
Alphonse Maria Mucha was born with multiple talents and his singing ability was one of them. He persuaded singing through school; however sketching was his true desire and passion; what he pursued to the greatest level. Mucha created decorative paintings, mostly beginning with painting theatrical scenery to start with. All during this time, he did not leave his development in knowledge skills and went on with his artistic education in an informal manner. In 1879, he worked for a leading Viennese theatrical design company, in Vienna, but shifted back, to Moravia, in 1881 to freelance in decorative and portrait painting, beginning his lifelong artistic career.

His was given his first big job by Count Karl Khuen from Mikulov who assigned Mucha the job to furnish the Castle of Hrušovany Emmahof with original murals by Mucha. This impressed the Count to a great level that he sponsored Mucha to the Munich Academy of Fine Arts for his formal artistic training.

The Slav Epic
Mucha is most widely known for his poster painting of Maude Adams as Joan of Arc, a poster for advertising a play at the Théâtre de la Renaissance on the Boulevard Saint-Martin featuring Sarah Bernhardt, the most celebrated actress in Paris who was so fascinated that she signed a six year contract with Mucha. He was also widely acclaimed for a stained glass in Prague's St. Vitus Cathedral, designed in the early 1930s, and the advertisement for the play by Victorien Sardou named Gismonda which was sighted on the streets of the city and became an overnight excitement as it announced Mucha and his new artistic style to the Paris citizens. Mucha toiled for many years on what he called his life's fine art creation; The Slav Epic also known as Slovanská epopej, a succession of twenty huge paintings portraying the history of the Slavic and the Czech people in general, devoted to the city of Prague in the year 1928.He had dreamt of compiling a series like this, which would be a celebration of Slavic history, since his youth.

Since 1963 the series has been displayed in the chateau in Moravský Krumlov, the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. A lot of thought was given to the idea of relocating The Slav Epic (Slovanská epopej) from Moravský Krumlov, where it has been displayed for about 45 years, to Prague. The idea was that Prague, a city frequently visited by countless thousands of tourists, would be able to attract increased attention and interest in the series of paintings. However, No suitable space could be found in Prague’s galleries to showcase the work. Therefore, the government found it suitable to keep the paintings in the same existing location since there have been considerably fewer problems with the space where they are currently displayed.

All through his life, Mucha continued to create a overabundance of art, posters, paintings, book illustrations, and advertisements, as well as designs for theatre sets, carpets, wallpaper, jewelry, in the so called ‘Mucha Style’ which became known as Art Nouveau - 'new art' in French. His work mostly gave special prominence to beautiful, strongly built young women in flowing evasively Neoclassical looking robes, often surrounded by lush flowers which  many a times formed haloes behind the heads of the women.

Mortal End of an Artist

During the rise of movement of the Fascisti, when Czechoslovakia was marched into by German troops in the spring of 1939, Mucha was one amongst the first persons to be arrested by the Gestapo, the German internal security police. During the progress of his questioning, the aged artist fell ill with pneumonia. Though finally released, he never recovered from the strain of this event, or from seeing his homeland invaded and overcome. He died in Prague on July 14, 1939, due to an infection of the lung, and was interred there in the Vyšehrad cemetery.

Art form Continues

Today, a museum is made in honor of Mucha called the Official Mucha Museum in Prague and is run by John Mucha, his grandson. The Official Mucha Museum in Prague contains to the greatest degree the best collection of the artworks of Mucha in the world.

Author: Maria Gordon, the founder of http://EuroGemOnline.com  , as her friends describe leads a simple yet extraordinary life. Born in Prague, Czech Republic, she completed her graduation in economics at Charles University and later at New York University. She has a Doctorate Degree in Art from NYU in 1996.

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