Alphonse Mucha
Alfons Maria Mucha (? Pronunciation / i, * July 24, 1860 Ivančice in Moravia; † July 14, 1939 in Prague) was a Czech poster artist, graphic designer, illustrator, painter, amateur photographer, and artisans, who is considered one of the outstanding representatives of Art Nouveau.
Life and work
Mucha began his artistic career as an autodidact. Since he had been rejected by the Prague Academy, he attended from 1879 a school for stage decoration in Vienna and in the evening in addition a character class; while he was sponsored by Count Karl Khuen Belasi. Finally he obtained at the company Kautsky - Brioschi - Burghardt a job and some jobs for stage paintings, especially for the Ring Theatre. After the devastating fire at the Ring Theatre in 1881 he lost this source of revenue and went back to Moravia.
1882 Mucha was commissioned to the interior of the neo-baroque castle Emin zámek ( Emmahof ) at Hrušovany nad Jevišovkou ( German Grusbach ) in Moravia, which was built for Edward Khuen Belasi equip. More paintings he argued at Appiano in South Tyrol in the ancestral castle of the family Gandegg Khuen Belasi. He studied, supported by the family Khuen Belasi, 1885-1887 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.
On the occasion of the World Exhibition of 1889 Mucha drew from Munich to Paris, at that time the Mecca of the arts. There, he took classes with different teachers, where he lived in humble circumstances, with small orders for book illustrations, but could stay afloat. He had shared a studio with Paul Gauguin for a short time. When he had discovered at the World's Fair, the Slavs under Ottoman rule in Bosnia, began his interest in the culture of the Slavs.
For breakthrough helped him an odd job for Sarah Bernhardt, the most famous actress of the western turn of the century. Shortly before Christmas 1894 she sought an artist who would design an event poster for the play " Gismonda " because their usual contractor failed. Mucha found this out by accident when visiting a print shop and offered to. He got the job, and so were two weeks later, his posters throughout Paris that would make him world famous. They were so popular that almost all were removed from art lovers, and made him one of the most sought after poster artists of the Belle Époque.
1896 Mucha designed for Sarah Bernhardt as Camille, a poster, which is widely regarded as one of the early highlights of the Art Nouveau graphics. During this time, Mucha also created designs for stocks and bonds, so for the department store "Paris France", which was founded in Paris in 1898 and in 1914 had more than 70 stores throughout France. In the period from 1898 to 1946 were published by this company 13 different stocks and bonds in 16 different Mucha design. From the " Société des Immeubles de France " are two bonds from the years 1891 and 1896; a document is available from the " Société Anonyme de l'Exposition Internationale de religieuse 1900" ( funding of a religious world exhibition). Even insurance policies of " Slavia " (Mutual Insurance Bank in Prague) carry impressive Mucha's distinctive artistic style. Securities of these companies are today among collectors to the most decorative and most sought-after papers.
Mucha was also an amateur photographer and used his photographs as models for his graphics.
In 1901 he was knighted and in 1934 an Officer of the French Legion of Honour. Mucha was a member of the Association of Masonic and valid according to the historian Jaroslav Sebek, from the Historical Institute of the Academy of Sciences, as a re-founder of Czech Freemasonry. A year later, he traveled with the French sculptor Auguste Rodin to Moravia. 1904 Mucha went on for two years in the United States, welcomed and celebrated with a multi-page special supplement of the New York Times, and taught there as a lecturer at the Academies of Fine Arts in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. In 1906 he married Marie Chytilová in Prague, which he had met in Paris.
After the First World War waned his success. Mucha returned to Czechoslovakia, where he was more artistically active. So he designed, for example, postage stamps ( including the first stamp of 1918 with a Hradcany motif), banknotes and medals for the young Czechoslovak state. On behalf of an American millionaire Mucha created in 18 years, a cycle of 20 monumental paintings; a monumental epic on the history of the Slavic peoples. Under the title Slav Epic the images can still be admired today. Financially independent, he lived with his wife and two children in a castle north of Prague.
Mucha was among the first who were interned after the invasion of the German troops in 1939. He died shortly afterwards from the effects of pneumonia. His son Jiří Mucha was Czech cosmopolitan, writer, journalist and screenwriter.
Monaco Monte -Carlo, 1897
Fruits, 1897
F. Champenois Imprimeur - Éditeur, 1897
La Plume, 1898
Dance, 1898
Postcard by Alfons M. Mucha - Byzantine Head, 1900
Self Portrait, circa 1907
Exhibitions
The Mucha Museum Prague is dedicated to the life and work of world-renowned representatives of Art Nouveau. It is located in a Baroque building of Kaunitz Palace in the historical center of Prague.
His major work, The Slav Epic was on view until 2012 at the Moravian Krumlov Castle ( German Moravian Kromau ) in the vicinity of his birthplace Ivančice and has since been re- issued Fair Palace in Prague.
Portraits
- Medal of Heinrich couch. Three versions: 41 mm, 80 mm and 99 mm.
- Medal without year by Milan Knobloch. 60 mm.
- Medal of Daniel Octobre. 78 mm.