Alphonse Maria Mucha born on the 24th July 1860 and died on the 14th July 1939 was a Czech Art Nouveau Artist and Decorator. He was one of the more well know Art Nouveau artists but best know for his depictions of women in most to all of his works. He has produced a huge body of work that included many paintings, drawings, ad campaigns and decorative designs.
Alphonse Maria Mucha was a man of many talents, his singing abilities paid his way through high school but drawing still held his heart as it had since his early childhood. He worked a few jobs; painting theatrical sets and general decorative painting jobs and in 1879 he moved to Vienna to work for a very prominent Viennese theatrical company. While being in Vienna he was able to further his artistic education immensely. In 1881 he moved back to Moravia the capital of Brno (where he had done his high school education) after a fire had destroyed his employers business in Vienna. While back in Moravia he continued his art doing freelance decorative and portrait painting. Karl Khuen the Count of Mikulov hired him to decorate the Hrusovany Emmanhof Castle and was impressed enough that he agreed to sponsor Mucha’s formal training at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts.
In 1887 Mucha moved to Paris to continue his studies at the Academie Julian and Academie Colarossi. While he studied he also work producing magazine and advertising illustrations. Late 1894, Mucha happened to drop into a print shop where there was an unexpected need for a new advertising poster for a play Mucha offered to produce a lithographed poster and in two weeks on the 1st of January 1895 advertising for the Play Gismonda by Victorien Sardou starring Sarah Berhardt, at the Theatre de Renaissance on the Boulevard Saint-Martin, appeared on the streets of the city. It was an overnight success, started the new artistic style and made its creator to the citizens of Paris famous. Bernhardt was impressed with the success of this first poster that she entered into a 6-year contract with Mucha.
In the years to come Mucha produced many paintings, posters advertisements and book illustrations before branching out to design Jewellery, carpets and wallpaper. And what was originally dubbed ‘Mucha Style’ became more widely known as Art Nouveau.
Mucha considered Le Pater his finest printed masterpiece, and referred to it in the January 5, 1900 issue of New York’s Sun Newspaper as the thing he had "put his soul into". In it shows Mucha's occult examination of the themes of The Lord's Prayer and only 510 copies were produced.
Mucha’s Artistic style almost always featured beautiful and curvy young women in flowing dresses, surrounded by flowers and sometimes haloed. In contrast to other contemporary poster makers, his works used pastel colours. His work was featured in Naturalised French Belgian Samuel Bing’s Maison de l’Art Nouveau. In the first ever Art Nouveau Exhibition “1900 Exhibition Universelle”
“I think the Exposition Universelle made some contribution toward bringing the aesthetic values into arts and crafts”
He decorated the Bosnia and Herzegovina Pavilion and was asked to collaborate on the Austrian Pavilion. His style was often imitated however Mucha was always trying to distance himself from being labeled saying that his paintings came from within and traditional Czech Art. He declared art existed only to communicate a spiritual message, and was frustrated at the fame he gained through his commercial art. He wanted to concentrate more on his lofty projects that would bring attention to his birthplace and its traditional art.
In 1906 Mucha married Maruška Chytilová on June 10, in Prague. The couple had 2 children, Jaroslava and Jiri. Jiri, (born March 12, 1915 in Prague; died April 5, 1991 in Prague) later became a well-known journalist, writer, screenwriter, and author of autobiographical novels and studies of the works of his father.
In the U.S Mucha worked to ear money to fund his nationalistic projects so that the Czechs would know that he hadn’t "sold out". After finding a supported in Millionaire Charles R. Crane, Alphonse and his family returned to the Czech lands and to settle in Prague, where he decorated the Theater of Fine Arts, created the murals in the Mayor's Office at the Municipal House, as well as other landmarks around the city. When Czechoslovakia won its independence after WW1, Mucha designed new postage stamps, bank notes and other government documents for the new state.
Mucha spent many years working on what he considered one of his life's fine art masterpieces, The Slav Epic, a series of twenty huge paintings depicting the history of the Czech and the Slavic people, bestowed to the city of Prague in 1928. He had long dreamed of completing a series such as this. Since 1963 the series has been on display in the chateau in Moravsky Krumlov the South Moravian Region in the Czech Republic. The government found it preferable to keep the paintings in their existing location since then.
Fascism in the late 1930’s led to Mucha’s works being dubbed by the press as “reactionary”. When the German troops invaded Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1939, Mucha was one of the first arrested and while in the course of his interrogation he fell ill with pneumonia. Although eventually he was released he never fully recovered mentally from the strain of his captivity and his country being invaded. He died of a lung infection on the 14th of July 1939 in Prague and was buried there in the Vysehrad cemetery
Mucha’s style was considered outdated when he died. His Son Jiri Mucha’s however devoted much of his life to writing about his father and his work. Mucha’s work style became popular again in the 1960 with a general interest in Art Nouveau. It is especially evident in the posters by Hapshash and the Coloured Goat, which was the collective name for two British artists, Michael English and Nigel Waymouth. They designed the posters for bands such as Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.
In his own country the authorities were not all that interested in Mucha or his work, his Slav Epic was rolled and stored for 25 years before being unearthed again and only recently has a Mucha Museum been opened in Prague, run by Mucha’s grandson, John Mucha. Mucha was also the restorer of Czech Freemasonry.
Mucha's work has continued to experience recurring revivals of interest for illustrators and artists. Some of these include:
· Painter Paul Harve whose subjects have included Madonna.
· The Japanese Manga artist Naoko Takeuchi famous for her Sailor Moon series released a series of posters depicting the sailor scout mimicking Mucha’s style.
· Another Manga artist, Masakazu Katsura has also mimicked Mucha's style several times.
· Comic book artist and current Marvel Comics Editor in Chief Joe Quesada also borrowed heavily from Mucha's techniques for a series of covers, posters, and prints.
· Grindcore and sludge metal band Soilent Green used a picture by Mucha for the cover of their album Sewn Mouth Secrets.
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