Alphons Maria Mucha (1860-1939)was a Czech painter who lived at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries that is why his art mingles different schools, techniques and trends. To describe Modernism (or Art Nuvo) scholars usually use the term “Mucha’s style”. Probably Mucha like van Gogh, Gauguin and Mane was influenced by Japanese coloured engravings that gave source of inspiration for many impressionists and were new as well as popular to the eye of the society that was brought up with respect to classical masterpieces of Ancient culture.
Alphons was a son of an officer of justice who was not that prosperous to provide his son with education in Art Accademy of Pragh. If Mucha hadn’t found a patron to sponsor him with money, he wouldn’t have entered the Academies of Art in Paris. A few years later his patron being sick and tired of spending money on his charge brought to a stop paying for Mucha’s education. Mucha had nothing to do but engage himself in painting commercial art that he proceeded with even after becoming a well-known artist not only in France but all around the Europe and even the New World.
The breaking point in his carrier was in 1894 when he was commenced to paint a playbill for Sarah Bernardt. She was so much enraptured by his work that immediately signed a six years contract with the artist. The playbills he wrote were extremely unusual for his time. Two meters in height of prolonged and narrow format with architectural extravagances depicted as a background and main characters who convey the mood of a play. If they hadn’t ravished citizens with their beauty, they wouldn’t have been tearing them down to pin up on their walls to decorate their own accommodation.
That time Mucha was not lack the commences. To have Mucha’s paintings on your wrapping meant to pave the way for success. When in France, Mucha worked as a scene designer, interior designer, illustrator, sculptor and also he painted sketches for jewelries. Extremely talented in different fields he was highly in demand. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been invited to join American Society of Illustrators. He received the invitation and after marriage with his disciple Mary moved to America in 1906 where he lived and worked for the next four years. He carried on depicting women he was famous for. Center of the composition usually a young healthy woman of Slavic appearance in loose fitting with a splendid crown of hair, drowning in a sea of flowers with a must of his works – a circle, that symbolizes holiness of a woman and resembles a hale. In contrast to the perturbed and anxious works of his contemporaries Klimt, Vrubel Leon Bakst, his works breath serenity and perceived with bliss. His innovation to art was so impressive that still his devices are used in advertisement, decoration and painting itself.
Fortunately or not, in 1910 he decided to return to Czech Republic. What was the reason for his homecoming? He decided that his previous work has exhausted itself and thought about creating a grand epic series of paintings on the history of Slavs. Immediately after returning to the Czech Republic in the vast hall of the castle Crystal Zbiroh near Prague he went to work. Over the next eighteen years out of his hands came out twenty monumental canvases depicting the crucial milestones (['kruːʃ(ə)l] 'maɪlstəun) in the history of the Slavic peoples, in particular, "The Slavs in their historic homeland," "Simon, King of Bulgaria," "Preaching of John Huss," "After the battle Gryunvalskogo "" Jan Comenius left home "and" The abolition of serfdom in Russia. " During these years he worked on the interiors of Prague's most famous buildings in Art Nouveau style - Municipal House, hotel "Europe" and "Imperial", creates a sketch of the main stained glass finished NPP St. Vitus Cathedral in the City. After the formation of independent Czechoslovakia in 1918 absorbed fly creation of "official" graphic style of the new state: his talent belongs to the samples first banknotes and postage stamps of the country, one of the options the state emblem and even government letterhead and envelopes.
In 1928, Mucha finished his "Slavic epic," and gives the city of Prague. Because of the time in Prague, there was no gallery, which could put it all entirely, she temporarily exhibited in the Palace of Fairs and after the war was placed in the castle town of Cesky Krumlov, Morawski (chesh. Moravský Krumlov; available for inspection in 1963 .) By the end of his life interest in it was lost: in Czechoslovakia, the 30s his work was considered obsolete and (the heyday of functionalism), and overly nationalistic.
Patriotism was an artist so famous that the government of Nazi Germany included it in the list of enemies of the Reich. After the capture of Prague in March 1939, the Gestapo arrested several times an elderly artist and subjected to interrogations, as a result he became ill with pneumonia and died on 14 June 1939. Alphonse Mucha was buried at Vysehrad Cemetery.
If not for his children, who rescued the works of their father, the seal of oblivion could have never been unsealed. His daughter Yaroslava being a restore saved many canvases of Slavic Epic. His son Irzhi became a writer and perpetuated his father’s life in literature. Yarmila Plozkova-Mucha a ‘bastard of Irzhi graduated from Academy of Art and since 1988 she creates jewelries designer items using her grandfather’s sketches. Thus Mucha’s art enjoys us after his master’s death.
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