Penultimatum
Mucha's graphic art style in Paris
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A key figure in Art Nouveau and inventor of a style of graphic art, Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) became one of Europe's most famous and innovative artists at the beginning of the 20th century.
The motive: to combine feminine beauty and nature with innovative composition and typography. The "Mucha style" was applied to works that adorned the homes of art lovers around the world.
Two years ago, the Grand Palais Immersif in Paris mounted one of the most comprehensive exhibitions to tell Mucha's story as a poster master in Paris, and to highlight his monumental works and subsequent influences, such as the Flower Power pacifist movement of half a century ago, Japanese manga, and tattoos.
That exhibition was the prelude to what is now the Prague museum dedicated to the artist. It occupies the Baroque Savarin Palace, restored by British designer Thomas Heatherwick.
It is also home to the Mucha Foundation, created in 1992 to promote his work. It also shows how a poor boy from a small Moravian village became the world's greatest decorative artist, who was also a pacifist and Freemason, and opposed the Nazi regime that occupied his homeland.
The museum houses the world's largest collection of his art. It includes 4,000 works, including paintings, drawings, jewelry, and lithographic posters, many of them originals newly printed by the artist and never before seen in public.
There you can admire the cycle of paintings considered his masterpiece: The Slav Epic, consisting of 20 monumental canvases. Half myth, half history, they depict moving episodes chosen by Mucha to trace the development, struggles, and heroism of Slavic civilization from ancient times to the 20th century.
The museum recounts Mucha's initial difficulties in Paris, where he shared a studio with Paul Gauguin. His breakthrough came in 1895, when Sara Bernhardt ("the divine," Oscar Wilde called her) asked him to create a poster promoting her work Gismonda. His design (a color lithograph) marked a radical departure from traditional posters.
In April 1972, the Arvil gallery successfully exhibited his work in Mexico.
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