A difficult start
Born in 1860 in a small village near Brno, in South Moravia, Mucha, passionate about drawing, quickly left the job his father had found for him to apply at the age of 18 to the School of Fine Arts in Prague... which refused him admission! He then emigrated to Vienna, where he managed to find a job in a company that created theater sets, while at the same time taking drawing classes. In 1881, back in Moravia after the fire of the theater for which he worked, Mucha uses his experience to launch himself as an independent decorator and portraitist. Four years later, he managed to enter the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he had many renowned teachers.
Mucha arrives in Paris
In 1887, as soon as his training was completed - he specialized in portraiture and drawing - he moved to Paris to further his studies and was already earning a living by producing numerous illustrations for books and advertising posters. The capital, where the silhouette of the Eiffel Tower is growing, is indeed in full effervescence, on the eve of the new World Fair, and orders are pouring in. With his studies completed, the illustrator began to look for a job with a serious book. He was finally offered a position with the prestigious Parisian publishing house Armand Colin, where he produced, among other things, the cover illustration for Judith Gautier's Memoirs of a White Elephant in 1894. Paris was the capital of the poster in the 1890s, from cabarets to theaters, all artists were involved. With the development of color lithography and the increasing demands of commercial advertising in the flourishing Belle Époque, artists had ample opportunity to explore this new form of artistic expression. Mucha's posters of the 1890s in Paris are his best-known works today. It is thanks to them that Mucha develops his idea of Art Nouveau, named after the store of the German art dealer and promoter of this new style, Siegfried Bing (1838-1905).
Sarah Bernhardt launches Mucha in Paris
At Christmas 1894, while Mucha is correcting prints in Lemercier's printing house to do a favor to his friend, the printer is contacted by Sarah Bernhardt who asks him for a new poster for the play Gismonda to be delivered immediately. As all the artists working for Lemercier are on vacations, he addresses to Mucha so that he takes care of the order. The artist starts to work and proposes various versions of the poster. In spite of the urgency of the order, Mucha innovates as well on the form as by the colors used. It develops the poster, then reserved for the street, by revolutionizing the kind and by imposing it in the heart of the modern art. On January1, 1895, the poster is posted everywhere in Paris and Parisians tear it off. Filled with admiration, Sarah Bernhardt signed a contract with Mucha: he would create sets, costumes and posters for her for six years. He designed six posters for the actress, including La Dame aux camélias and Lorenzaccio , for which he kept the same principles as for Gismonda: a composition all in length and around a single character, Sarah Bernhardt, who overhangs the stage like a classical Virgin.
Graphic works of Mucha
In his graphic works, Mucha likes to organize his drawings in cycles whose major inspiration is nature. His first panel of 1896, The Seasons, testifies to this. Mucha continues his work by varying the motives, as in Flowers (1898) or Hours of the day (1899) which are for Mucha works of maturity. Femmes fatales, vegetal elements... the Mucha style overflows with vitality and it is what pleases at a time when the new century will soon begin. The cycle The Arts (1898) is considered the most accomplished by the critics of the time and today. From 1896 on, he used traditional Moravian folk elements with dresses, flowers and other plant motifs that adorned and gave movement to his drawings. He made references to Byzantine icons, as he believed that Slavic culture had its origin in Byzantine art. But he does not stop there in his references to the past art: the geometry and the curves of his compositions are not without reminding the Czech baroque. To develop his style, Mucha is inspired by various decorative motives of various times and countries, being inspired for that by books at his disposal.
The exclusive contract with Champenois and the orders of Georges Fouquet
In 1896, the Parisian printer F. Champenois offers him an exclusive contract and Mucha, in spite of his success, finds there a financial security and a monthly payment. The arrival of the tsar Nicolas II of Russia in 1896 makes the headlines. The whole Paris dreams of the Slavs and applauds the Mucha style. The panels of the city become real open-air galleries. Champenois ordered not only advertising posters but also panels intended for interior decoration. Moreover, attracted by the magnificent jewels appearing on Mucha's posters such as Medea and Zodiac, the goldsmith and jeweler Georges Fouquet, who succeeded his father in 1895, was determined to shake up his house and hired Mucha along with other new decorators. In 1899, Mucha created a collection of jewelry for his stand at the 1900 Paris International Exhibition. This was a very important moment for the designer from Prague, who also took charge of renewing the entire decoration of the boutique inaugurated in 1901 on rue Royale. From the façade to the decorative objects in the store, Mucha worked as a true artistic director and received praise from the specialized press, such as the Revue de la bijouterie. Today, the Carnavalet Museum in Paris preserves the interior design of the store. Strengthened by this success, Mucha started to create advertising posters ordered by printers.
Mucha and Freemasonry
Mucha is not only a great decorator and an artist of genius. He seeks spirituality and recognizes himself in the values of Freemasonry when in 1898, he joins the lodge of the Grand Orient de France. In the perspective of contributing to the progress of humanity, he committed himself to the pursuit of three great virtues in his work as an artist: beauty, truth and love. At that time, Art Nouveau was to affect all the plastic arts - painting, sculpture, graphic arts, architecture and decorative arts - and by 1900 it had spread throughout Europe. Very fashionable, Mucha became a master of the poster and the most sought after and copied decorator in Paris. But he did not recognize himself in this vocation, too preoccupied by politics. He received the Legion of Honor in 1901 and made his first trip to the United States. He painted portraits of notables and met Charles Richard Crane (1858-1939). In 1906, he visited the United States for the fourth time and taught at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Mucha's return to Prague for his Slavic Epic
In Chicago, he secured the support of a patron with a passion for Central Europe, Charles Richard Crane, and at the height of his fame, Mucha was haunted by his native country still under Austro-Hungarian rule. He returned to Prague in 1910 to create a work he had been thinking about for a long time: The Slavic Epic. The Chicago patron provided him with money and friendship for two decades. After completing the interior decoration of the mayor's salon in Prague, he had all the necessary conditions to complete his project. The castle of Zbiroh in Western Bohemia welcomed him in residence and he finally found the serenity to work there. Mucha matured this project since Paris and he wishes to make a work which can push the Slavs to the unity, to give them a horizon and to teach them their history to better build the future. Mucha divided the history of the Slavic people into twenty historical periods, which are based on the Czech history in ten panels, and that of the other Slavic nations in ten panels as well. This history of the Slavic people extends from the origins to the First World War. Mucha surrounds himself with experts in Slavic history and travels to constitute his preparatory studies. He travels in Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Poland, Russia and Greece to observe the customs, traditions, costumes and culture. He chooses monumental formats; the largest canvases reaching 6 m by 8 m. Mucha still believes that art can influence people and politics, and, in this period between the two world wars, he is full of hope to instill unity in the Slavs. But the Slavs were divided, and the borders defined by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 left many nations dissatisfied. In the meantime, the Czechoslovak Republic was proclaimed in 1918 following the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Mucha created the first postage stamps and banknotes of the finally independent nation. He continued to draw his Epic and completed it a few years before the tenth anniversary of Czechoslovakia, on the occasion of which Mucha offered the whole of this masterpiece to the city of Prague.
A tragic end
In 1933, Germany elected Adolf Hitler as chancellor. In 1936, the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris and the Moravian Museum of Decorative Arts in Brno each dedicated a retrospective exhibition to Mucha and he was as well known and in demand in Europe as in the United States. But in 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia and occupied Prague. Listed by the Nazis as a "dangerous patriot painter" and a Freemason, Mucha was arrested by the Gestapo but released. His health deteriorates quickly. He died on July 14, 1939 in Prague. He is buried in the Slavin (the Czech pantheon), in the cemetery of Vyšehrad in Prague.
