Czech Artist Alfons Mucha’s Exhibition In Vienna

Czech Art Nouveau Painter Alfons Mucha’ s exhibition is held at the Unteres Belvedere museum in Vienna from February 12 to June 1. According to the French curator of the exhibit Jean-Louis Gaillemin about 250 paintings, sketches, drawings, posters, books, etc are put on display to showcase masterpieces of this famous Moravian artist.

Unteres Belvedere museum director Agnes Husslein informed mass media people during the exhibit’s opening ceremony: "After the big Klimt exposition, we're happy to welcome this complete retrospective of the life and works of Alfons Mucha, another master of Art Nouveau."

Alfons Maria Mucha was born in 1860 in the town of Ivančice, Moravia. As a young boy he was a rather great singer, which gave him a chance to be enrolled into a school in Brno, Moravian capital then. But his main desire was painting, so he used to do number of decorative painting jobs in Moravia, mostly for local theatres. In 1879 Alfons moved to Vienna, where he got a job for a leading theatrical design company.

In 1881 the fire ruined the company Alfons Mucha worked for and he was forced to go back to Moravia, where he continued to create decorations and paint portraits. In 1887 he headed to Paris to continue his education at Académie Julian and Académie Colarossi. In 1895 the artist created an art nouveau lithographed poster of a very famous movie star Sarah Bernhardt and became very famous himself. Since then he created a lot of successful paintings, posters, advertisements, and book illustrations.

But one of his most astonishing and great masterpieces is The Slav Epic (Slovanská epopej), a series of twenty enormous paintings portraying the history of the Czech people and the Slavs in general. Alfons Mucha dedicated many years to create The Epic and gave it as a gift to the city of Prague in 1928 (now it is displayed at Moravsky Krumlov castle).

In 1939 Alfons Mucha was arrested by the Nazis and died in a short time afterwards on July 14 the same year.

Photo: advertisment poster by Alfons Mucha (artchive.com)