Mucha
Double bed 37 €/room/night
ALPHONS MUCHA
Alphons Maria Mucha was a Czech Art Nuovo painter and decorative artist. He became famous nearly overnight thanks to the Gismonda (1894 - 1895) theatre poster ordered by Parisian actress Sarah Bernhard. Later the actress entered into a contract with Mucha and he created several more posters for her and the Renaissance Theatre in Paris.
Mucha was born in Ivančice (25 km to the south of Brno) in a family of a court usher. He studied the Slavic grammar school in Brno - Královo Pole. He moonlighted as a singer in boys' cathedral chorus at St. Peter and Paul (PETROV).
In 1879 Mucha moved to Vienna to paint theatrical sceneries at the Kautsky-Brioschi-Burghardt company. Later he left for Mikulov (60 km to the south of Brno) where he portrayed local people. In 1883 he was invited by the count Khuen Belassim to decorate chateau Emmahof in Vienna. In 1885 Mucha moved to Munich to attend the academy and two years later he entered the Julian academy in Paris. In 1892 he was entrusted with illustration of the Scenés et épisodes de l'histoire d'Allemagne by Charles Seignobos. The turning point of his career came in 1897 when he was ordered the poster for Sarah Bernhard.
The period of Mucha's greatest fame is dated to the end of the 19th and beginning of 20th centuries. In the USA he was welcome as the greatest decorative artist of the world nevertheless he longed to return to Czech lands. He was the author of first stamps and banknotes of the newly established independent Czechoslovak Republic. Mucha famed also as an applied art designer; apart from posters, labels, chocolate, biscuit or cigarette boxes he painted drafts of menus, calendars and decorative panels, he illustrated books. His works include interior designs, pottery, jewellery but also windows in the St. Vitus Cathedral (1931) in Prague.
Alphons Mucha was a great patriot and all his life he dreamt about creating a cycle of large size paintings, the Slav Epic that should summarize the history of Slavic nation. He painted the cycle of enormous canvases on the Zbiroh castle since 1910. The Epic was completed in 1928 and Mucha donated it to Prague. In the socialist period of Czechoslovakia the bourgeois Art Nuovo style was not in fashion and the Epic was exhibited in an outworn provincial chateau in Moravský Krumlov. Today's effort of Prague to transfer the Epic back to the capital meets the understandable resistance of Moravský Krumlov citizens.
Alphons Mucha died in Prague on 14th July 1939 on pneumonia, after being interrogated by Gestapo. Czech astronomer Antonín Mrkos named a main-belt asteroid (5122) for him, Mucha.
