Alphonse Mucha

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Biography of Alphonse Mucha

Czechoslovakian Art Nouveau printmaker and painter
born 1860 - died 1939

Also known as: Mucha Alphonse, Alphonse maria Mucha, Alfons Marie Mucha, Alphonse Marie Mucha.

Teacher of: Roman Kryzanovsky (1885-1929), Clara Weaver Parrish (1861-1925).

Mucha Alphonse (1860-1939) was a prolific Moravian painter of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries and a key figure in the Art Nouveau movement. Mucha art style of painting influenced an entire generation of painters, graphic artists, draughts men and designers of many, the artist came to resent his fame as an at of the utilitarian, believing that true art should be elevated and epic.

Artist Mucha was born on July 24, 1860, in the n of Ivancice, Moravia, then part of Austro-Hungary. The future painter was raised in an atmosphere of strict Roman Catholicism, and this would later be reflected in the symbolism painter employed in Alphonse Mucha art.

Soon afterwards, he returned to Ivancice where, in the meanwhile, Alphonse Mucha found artwork as a municipal clerk.

At this point, the painter was feeling confident enough in his artistic skills to take up portrait painting. He moved back to Moravia, to the town of Mikulov, and it was there that the painter met Count Karl Khuen-Belassi, a local nobleman, who commissioned him to decorate the Emmahof Castle. The Count was so impressed with Mucha paintings that he agreed to sponsor the artist's formal education. In 1884, after touring northern Italy and Austria with his patron, the painter entered the Academy of Visual Art in Milan.

In 1892, the painter designed his first poster. Finding this line of Mucha art profitable, he began taking regular commissions and, in 1894, the artist designed a poster for the show "Gismonda" of the highly popular stage actress Sarah Bernhardt. The poster was revolutionary, bringing unheard of innovations to the art of poster-printing, which had hitherto consisted of large amounts of text with a few simple illustrations, usually in just one or two colors. The Gismonda poster (1892) employed a radically new vertical format -- a legacy of which we can see in posters today -- and an unheard-of amount of colors and detail.

For Mucha Alphonse, who had been a nearly unknown artist up to this point, this was a breakthrough. Sarah Bernhardt was so impressed with Mucha Seasons that she immediately offered the artist an exclusive six-year contract. The posters that Mucha produced for her include: La Dame aux Camelias (1896), Lorenzaccio (1896), La Samaritaine (1897), Medee (1898), Hamlet (1899) and Tosca (1899). During this time, Alphonse Mucha painter was also responsible for the stage sets and costumes at the Theatre de la Renaissance, where Bernhardt worked.

In 1896, the artist designed his first panneaux decoratifs: The Mucha Seasons (1896). Panneaux decoratifs were limited-edition large-size prints executed on silk or stiff papers, often ornately framed, hung on walls or screens. Usually, these featured highly stylized nature scenes, inspired by the silk screen paintings of the Orient. Mucha artist would produce several series of these, including: Flowers (1898), the Art (1898), the Months (1899), Gemstones (1900) and Stars (1901).

In 1902, with interest in Art Nouveau beginning to wane, Mucha travelled to his homeland, visiting Moravia and Prague. To him, his Art Noveau work had been something frivolous and unimportant, so Alphonse Mucha was not particularly disappointed that it had fallen out of fashion. In fact, this was only to be expected, for him believed that the only "true" art was academic. It was during his 1902 trip home that the artist became infected with the idea of Mucha art a series of epic patriotic paintings, showing the somewhat fictionalized history of the Slavic people in a grand, neo-classical style.

Though he considered this to be the most meaningful Mucha art nouveau of his life, the paintings were received rather coldly by the European public, due to changing tastes and also probably to the First World War, raging at the time. The New World accepted them rather more enthusiastically, when part of the Slavic Epic was exhibited in New York in 1921. However, the Mucha art were never nearly as successful as his early Art Nouveau paintings.

In 1920, Czechoslovakia gained its independence from Austro-Hungary as part of the aftermath of the First World War. Mucha, who had always sympathized with the cause of Slavic separatism, went enthusiastically to work for the new government, designing banknotes and official documents for the new state. Although Alphonse Mucha continued to paint until the very end of his life, his artistic heyday was, by this point, well over. A fairly affluent and politically active individual, Alphonse maria Mucha devoted the rest of his life to indulging his love for academic art. The artist made no more revolutionary innovations that had characterized his early artistic career.