Alphonse Maria Mucha was a famous 19th century Art Nouveau artist who achieved widespread adulation for his design originality and trendsetting painting styles. He is best known for his paintings as also postcards, advertisements, illustrations, and designs for theatre sets, jewelry, wallpaper and carpets that were initially called The Mucha Style.
Mucha was born in Moravia (Czech Republic) to a court attendant. A gifted child, his singing talents saw him through high school education before he took up job as a decorative painter in Moravia, where he mostly painted scenery for the theatre. He moved to Vienna in 1879 to join a renowned theatre design company and this gave him the opportunity to informally advance his artistic knowledge. However, after a fire destroyed the business, he returned to Moravia in 1881 and worked as a freelance portrait and decorative painter at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts.
In 1887, Mucha moved to Paris where he studied at Académie Julian and Académie Colarossi. In Paris, he completed an exhaustive list of paintings and designs that gained instant popularity. His paintings blended modern ambience with attractive pastel shade backgrounds and received critical acclaim at art exhibitions. He frequently painted young, beautiful women wearing neoclassically-styled robes, often posed midst flowers that sometimes formed a halo behind their heads. Mucha proclaimed he was never dictated by artistic norms, or by what sold well. His original style reflected his beliefs and carved an artistic genre for itself. Two of his most spellbinding creations are the ‘Le Pater’ and ‘The Slav Epic’, both masterpieces.
After his marriage to Maria Mazurka, Mucha traveled extensively across the United States and also participated in social upliftment and nationalistic projects. He attained much fame and status in his lifetime before succumbing to the raging Fascism across Europe at the break of the World War II.
Mucha was denounced as “reactionary” both as an artist and a Slavic nationalist. His nationality and Jewish roots made him one of the Gestapo’s primary targets during the Nazi occupation, resulting in his arrest in 1939 when the German army moved into Czechoslovakia. Mucha’s age, affliction with pneumonia and Nazi interrogation weakened him considerably and he died from lung infection on July 14th, 1939 in Prague.
Mucha’s fame has spread to all corners of the globe. Much revered, his art continues to inspire present generation of artists and illustrators.
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