Mucha Alphonse Maria

Theater artist, illustrator, jewelry designer and poster artist, one of the most famous representatives of the Art Nouveau style. He studied at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, the Julian Academy and the Colarossi Academy in Paris. He headed the Association of Slavic Artists. From 1887, for some time, Mucha shared his workshop with Van Gogh. Here Mucha met the artists Wyspiański, Verkade, Mehoffer, Podkowiński and Slewiński. In Paris, he illustrated the multi-volume work “Scenes and Episodes from the History of Germany” by the French historian Charles Senobos, and from 1893 he occupied the place of the theater’s chief decorator: his brushes belonged to the posters for the plays “The Lady of the Camellias,” “Medea,” “The Samaritan Woman,” “Tosca” and “Hamlet,” as well as the scenery for these productions, costumes and decorations. During these same years, he became widely known as the author of labels and vignettes for various products - from champagne and biscuits to bicycles and matches, as well as as a designer of jewelry, interiors, and applied art (carpets, drapes, etc.). In 1906, he accepted the offer of the American Society of Illustrators and moved to the USA, considered the largest artist of our time. Mucha taught at the Art Institute of Chicago, and in 1908 he created the scenery for the German Theater in New York. However, in 1910 he returned to the Czech Republic, where over the next few years twenty monumental canvases came out from under his brush, depicting turning points in the history of the Slavic peoples, in particular, “Slavs in the Historical Homeland” (“Slavs in the Ancestral Homeland”), “Simeon, King of Bulgaria”, “Sermon of Master Jan Hus”, “After the Battle of Grunwald”, “Jan Komensky leaves homeland" and "Abolition of serfdom in Rus'." A museum in Prague, an exhibition of the “Slavic Epic” cycle in Moravian Krumlov and an exhibition about the early years of his life in the restored former courthouse in Ivančice are dedicated to the work of Alfons Mucha. Mucha's works are included in the collections of many prominent museums and galleries around the world. Plans are currently being developed to build a special building for the exhibition of the Slavic Epic in Prague's Stromovka Park, near the former exhibition complex.