Visiting Prague

Summary: the life and work of the painter and creator of Art Nouveau in the Czech Republic, Alphonse Mucha

Alphonse Mucha was born in Ivancice, Moravia on 24 July of the year 1860. when he was eleven years old he won a choral scholarship to the St. Peter Church in Brno. Four years later he returns to Ivancice although in 1878 Mucha applies to the Prague Academy of Fine Arts and Prague hotels but his not accepted because the school didn’t consider his works good enough. A year later the moves to Vienna where he works as a scene painter for Kautsky-Brioschi-Burghardt an theatrical design company. Mucha’s bad luck continued, the place was burned and he had to return to Moravia. Back home he worked as a freelance decorative and portrait painting. In 1883 he is invited by Count Khuen-Belassi to decorate his castle at Emmahof in Austria. The Count was so impressed at the quality of Mucha’s work that decided to sponsor his studies at the Munich Academy of Art. In 1887 Mucha moves to Paris to study at the Academie Julian, still helped by his patron. In the next year he decides to study at the Academie Colarossi. In 1889 the Count Khuen-Belassi stops sponsoring Mucha and he has to find a job therefore he begins to illustrate a theater magazine Le Costume au theatre. In this job he is asked to make a new poster for the play where Sarah Bernhardt had to be represented as Cleopatra for the Theatre de la Renaissance. She was at the time the most famous actress in Paris. Later was the poster for Gismonda that was all over the streets of the most glamorous city, Paris. Mucha special style was starting to be known. Mucha produced a flurry of paintings, posters, advertisements, and book illustrations, as well as designs for jewellery, carpets, wallpaper, and theatre sets in what came to be known as the Art Nouveau style. In 1891 he starts to work for Armand Colin, the publisher who will be his new font of income.
The friend he made in Paris Paul Gauguin returns form Tahiti and together they share the same studio in Rue de la Grande Chaumiere. In 1896 Mucha paints one of his most known work “The Four Seasons”. A year later takes place his first exhibition at the Bodiniére Gallery, Paris, and later is the turn of the Salon des Cent’s Mucha exhibition. In 1899 he has the authorization from the Austro-Hungarien Government to participate in the 1900 Paris Universal Exhibition. In the year of the Universal Exhibition he starts to work for Georges Fouquet’s jewellery shop. Between 1902 and 1905 he publishes Documents Décoratifs and Figures Décoratives.
A year later he lives Europe and moves to the U.S. where he teaches and paints with oil. Although four years later he decides to go back o his home country but this time to Prague hotel where he works for the Slav Epic, he also does morals for the Prague Town Hall. In 1818 when Czechoslovakia is already free he is chosen to design postage stamps and bank notes. Ten years later the Slav Epic is ready and shown to the Czechs in Prague. He is invited to design a stained glass window for the St. Vitu’s Cathedral whish is until today admired by millions of people who visit the city.
The fascism in the Czech Republic known to be very strike with artists, who created a critical spirit in the population, especially because of his feelings connected to the Slavic Nationalism, took Mucha to jail in 1939 although released not after long time. Mucha never recovered form the pneumonia that attacked him during the interrogations of Gestapo and died in the same year. Today he is buried in the Vysehrad cemetery.

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