An exhibition of one of the most important painters of the Art Nouveau period and the top representative of art nouveau, Alfonso Mucha, is currently taking place in the premises of the Valdštejnské palace in Prague. The cross-sectional exhibition maps, through the author's works from the family collection together with the impressive architectural rendering of Eva Jiřičná, the most important stages of the artist's life. The visitor has the opportunity to see paintings, sculptures, graphics, photographs, posters or even jewelry, some of which were presented to the public for the very first time.
Alfons Mucha was born in 1860 in Ivančice in Moravia, at the height of the Czech national revival, and as a young boy he became an enthusiastic supporter of the idea of an independent Czech nation. He completed his studies in Munich and Paris, where he later settled and worked as an illustrator and graphic artist. A breakthrough in his career was a meeting with the actress Sára Bernhardt, for whom he created a poster for the theatrical performance of Gismondo. This brought him great acclaim from the French public practically overnight, and Sarah Bernhardtová signed a collaboration with him for the next six years. In this period, in addition to posters, he also designed scenography and costumes for performances. At the same time, he created a number of advertising posters, drawings, pastels, watercolors, but also interior designs, decorative panels or utilitarian objects. The central theme of his work was mainly the celebration of nature and the beauty of the female body. He was influenced by symbolism, the Arts and Crafts movement and English design. In Paris, he maintained friendship with the sculptor Auguste Rodin and the painter Paul Gaguin. In 1900, as part of the World Exhibition in Paris, he decorated the Bosnia and Herzegovina pavilion on the order of representatives of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, for which he received a silver medal from the exhibition commission.
But his crowning achievement was a set of twenty large-format paintings, The Slavic Epic, in which the painter captured the history of the Slavic peoples from prehistoric times to the present day. Mucha developed this idea during his stay in America, where he was supported by the wealthy American investor Charles R. Crane, who was keenly interested in the history of the Slavs and was also an influential member of the Masonic guild. Alfons Mucha worked on the Slavic epic at the Zbiroh castle for more than sixteen years, and in 1928 the paintings were officially handed over to the city of Prague as a gift to the Czech nation. This magnificent work can currently be seen at the castle in Moravský Krumlov, but some of its fragments are also presented in the Prague exhibition.
In the first part of the exhibition, there are rare self-portraits of the author from his Paris period, as well as portraits of his family members, including Mucha's wife Maruška, and jewelry that the artist created for them. In the next part, you can see a series of groundbreaking posters from Sarah Bernhardt's theatrical performances, on which the fact that the world-famous diva also played male roles, such as Shakespeare's Hamlet, is interesting. The exhibition continues with oils from the decoration of the German Theater in New York or a photo of the author in the uniform of the Masonic guild. It is known that Alfons Mucha was a holder of the 33rd Scottish Rite, which is actually the highest degree of initiation that Freemasons can achieve. The exhibition is also enriched by regular screenings of Czech director Roman Vávra's film The World According to Much, which presents the life of this versatile artist through the eyes of his son Jiří. The upper part of the exhibition on the first floor is dedicated to the Slavic epic, with details of some paintings, but also drawings from this cycle and information about their creation. And in the final part of the exhibition, we will meet a group of oil paintings with folk or biblical themes, including designs for stained glass windows for St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague. Probably the most surprising in this section is the color lithograph from 1922, with a very current theme, under the title Russia in need of restoration, depicting an unhappy Russian mother holding a sleeping child in her arms. This work also testifies to the fact that Alfons Mucha was not only a brilliant painter and an erudite connoisseur of Slavic history, but also an enlightened visionary. And the exhibition in the Valdštejnská garden is proof of that.