History of Art: Art Nouveau

A L F O N S

M U C H A

master of art nouveau

by Renate Ulmer

Alfons Mucha's is an art of seduction.

His graceful women, delicate colours and

decorative style add up to an unashamed act of temptation.

The Decline of Art Nouveau

Self-Portrait

The year 1902 saw the publication of Mucha's Documents decoratifs, a loose-leaf collection which at the same time testifies to his rich inventiveness and his success as a teacher of the decorative arts. From newly developed alphabets and minutely detailed studies of plants to designs for ornamental and utilitarian objects as diverse as items of furniture, cutlery, crockery and many more, this collection of patterns, with its typical linear and floral concepts of form and its flowing silhouettes, comes across as the textbook of Art Nouveau.
By 1902, however, Art Nouveau had already passed its zenith, and artistic taste was beginning to change. Yet notwithstanding the vicissitudes of fashion, Mucha clung obstinately to the style he had made his own, and continued to work in it. Perhaps he was aware of his own waning creativity and dwindling fame when in 1904 he took the decision to leave Paris for America, where at first new commissions awaited him. Even so, this sojourn in the United States, at least from the artistic point of view, did not bring the success he had hoped for.

Documents decoratifs	Documents decoratifs

Documents decoratifs	Documents decoratifs

Untitled

Easter chimes awaken nature

Contemplation

Envisage

Heraldic Chivalry

Winter Night

Woman in the Wilderness



	Developments in the 19th Century
	Art Styles in 19th century - Art Map
	Alphonse Mucha

	*Alfons Maria Mucha* born July 24, 1860, Ivančice, Moravia, Austrian Empire [now in Czech Republic] died July 14, 1939, Prague, Czechoslovakia original name Alfons Maria Mucha Art Nouveau illustrator and painter noted for his posters of idealized female figures. After early education in Brno, Moravia, andwork for a theatre scene-painting firm in Vienna, Mucha studied art in Prague, Munich, and Paris in the 1880s. He first became prominent as the principal advertiser of the actress Sarah Bernhardt in Paris. He designed the posters for several theatrical productions featuring Bernhardt, beginning with Gismonda (1894), and he designed sets and costumes for her as well. Mucha designed many other posters and magazine illustrations, becoming one of the foremost designers in the Art Nouveau style. His supple, fluent draftsmanship is used to great effect in his posters featuring women. His fascination with the sensuous aspects of female beauty—luxuriantly flowing strands of hair, heavy-lidded eyes, and full-lipped mouths—as well as his presentation of the female image as ornamental, reveal the influence of the English Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic on Mucha, particularly the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The sensuous bravura of the draftsmanship, particularly the use of twining, whiplash lines, imparts a strange refinement to his female figures. Between 1903 and 1922 Mucha made four trips to the United States, where he attracted the patronage of Charles Richard Crane, a Chicago industrialist and Slavophile, who subsidized Mucha's series of 20 large historical paintings illustrating the “Epic of the Slavic People” (1912–30). After 1922 Mucha lived in Czechoslovakia, and he donated his “Slavic Epic” paintings to the city of Prague.