Alphonse Maria Mucha, (1860-1939), was an incredibly talented Czech Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist. His 150th birthday was being celebrated this week with a gift from Google: a Google Doodle.
Mucha was most known for his distinct style of paintings, illustrations, advertisements, and designs; mostly of women.
ARTKABINETT savvy collectors may have noticed this on Monday when conducting their computer searches.
Alphonse Maria Mucha was born with singing abilities to add to his list of talents. His singing got him through school; however drawing was his true passion and what he pursued to the highest degree. Mucha worked at decorative painting jobs, mostly painting theatrical scenery to start.
During this time, he continued to further his artistic education in an informal way. In 1879, in Vienna, he worked for a leading Viennese theatrical design company, but moved back, in 1881 to Moravia, to do freelance decorative and portrait painting, just to start his lifelong artistic career.
His first big job was given to him by Count Karl Khuen of Mikulov who hired Mucha to decorate the Hruöovany Emmahof Castle with Mucha's original murals.
The Count was so impressed that sponsored Mucha's formal artistic training at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts.
Mucha is mostly well known for his poster of Maude Adams as Joan of Arc, an advertising poster for a play at the Théatre de la Renaissance on the Boulevard Saint-Martin starring Sarah Bernhardt, the most famous actress in Paris (who was so impressed that she entered into a six year contract with Mucha).
He also designed the magnificent stained glass in Prague's St. Vitus Cathedral (below right) which was designed in the early 1930s, and the advertisement for the play Gismonda by Victorien Sardou which appeared on the streets of the city.
This became an overnight sensation as it announced Mucha and his new artistic style to the citizens of Paris.
Mucha worked for several years on what he called his life's fine art masterpiece; The Slav Epic (Slovansk· epopej), a series of twenty huge paintings depicting the history of the Czech and the Slavic people in general, bestowed to the city of Prague in 1928.
Throughout his life, Mucha continued to produce a plethora of art of paintings, posters, advertisements, and book illustrations, as well as designs for jewelry, carpets, wallpaper, and theatre sets in what was initially called the Mucha Style but became known as Art Nouveau (French for 'new art').
His work mostly featured "beautiful, robust young women in flowing vaguely Neoclassical looking robes, often surrounded by lush flowers which sometimes formed haloes behind the women's heads."
Mucha produced a flurry of paintings, posters, advertisements, and book illustrations, as well as designs for jewellery, carpets, wallpaper, and theatre sets in what was initially called the Mucha Style but became known as Art Nouveau.
Mucha's works frequently featured beautiful, robust young women in flowing vaguely Neoclassical looking robes, often surrounded by lush flowers which sometimes formed haloes behind the women's heads.
In contrast with contemporary poster makers he used pale pastel colors.
The 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris spread the "Mucha style" internationally, of which Mucha said "I think [the Exposition Universelle] made some contribution toward bringing aesthetic values into arts and crafts."
He decorated the Bosnia and Herzegovina Pavilion and collaborated in the Austrian Pavilion. His Art Nouveau style was often imitated.
The Art Nouveau style however, was one that Mucha attempted to distance himself from throughout his life; he always insisted that rather than adhering to any fashionable stylistic form, his paintings came purely from within and Czech art.
He declared that art existed only to communicate a spiritual message, and nothing more; hence his frustration at the fame he gained through commercial art, when he most wanted to concentrate on more lofty projects that would ennoble art and his birthplace
During the rise of fascism, when German troops marched into Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1939, Mucha was among the first persons to be arrested by the Gestapo. During the course of his interrogation, the aging artist fell ill with pneumonia and passed away in 1939.
Today, Mucha is honored with a museum called the Official Mucha Museum which appears in Prague and is run by his grandson, John Mucha.
The Official Mucha Museum in Prague contains by far the best collection of Mucha artworks in the world.
Visit www.mucha.cz for more information.
The famous Czech artist is being sought by many people on the internet today since it is his birthday even despite the fact that this great artist is not with us today.
Many people remember Alphonse Mucha for his works. He died at the age of seventy-eight in 1939.
Tomorrow...more of Art Nouveau.
