Alphonse Maria Mucha Illustration (1860-1939) 4K Ultra HD .mp4

Alfons Maria Mucha (1860-1939) was a Czech painter, illustrator and graphic artist, living in Paris during the Art Nouveau period, best known for his distinctly stylized and decorative theatrical posters of Sarah Bernhardt.

In the second part of his career, at the age of 43, he returned to his homeland and devoted himself to painting a series of twenty monumental canvases known as The Slav Epic, depicting the history of all the Slavic peoples of the world, which he painted between 1912 and 1926. In 1928, on the 10th anniversary of the independence of Czechoslovakia, he presented the series to the Czech nation. He considered it his most important work. It is now on display in the national museum of Prague.

Mucha moved to Paris in 1888 where he enrolled in the Académie Julian and the following year, 1889, Académie Colarossi. The two schools taught a wide variety of different styles. His first professors at the Academie Julien were Jules Lefebvre who specialized in female nudes and allegorical paintings, and Jean-Paul Laurens, whose specialties were historical and religious paintings in a realistic and dramatic style. At the end of 1889, as he approached the age of thirty, his patron, Count Belasi, decided that Mucha had received enough education and ended his subsidies.

When he arrived in Paris, Mucha found shelter with the help of the large Slavic community. He lived in a boarding house called the Crémerie at 13 rue de la Grand Chaumerie, whose owner, Charlotte Caron, was famous for sheltering struggling artists; when needed she accepted paintings or drawings in place of rent. Mucha decided to follow the path of another Czech painter he knew from Munich, Ludek Marold, who had made a successful career as an illustrator for magazines. In 1890 and 1891, he began providing illustrations for the weekly magazine La Vie popular, which published novels in weekly segments. His illustration for a novel by Guy de Maupassant called The Useless Beauty, was on the cover of the 22 May 1890 edition.

His illustrations began to give him a regular income. He was able to buy a harmonium to continue his musical interests and his first camera, which used glass-plate negatives. He took pictures of himself and his friends, and also regularly used it to compose his drawings. He became friends with Paul Gauguin, and shared a studio with him for a time when Gauguin returned from Tahiti in the summer of 1893 In late autumn 1894 he also became friends with the playwright August Strindberg, with whom he had a common interest in philosophy and mysticism.

His magazine illustrations led to book illustration; he was commissioned to provide illustrations for Scenes and Episodes of German History by historian Charles Seignobos.Four of his illustrations, including one depicting the death of Frederic Barbarossa, were chosen for display at the 1894 Paris Salon of Artists. He received a medal of honor, his first official recognition.

Mucha added another important client in the early 1890s; the Central Library of Fine Arts, which specialized in the publication of books about art, architecture and the decorative arts. It later launched a new magazine in 1897 called Art et Decoration, which played an early and important role in publicizing the Art Nouveau style. He continued to publish illustrations for his other clients, including illustrating a children's book of poetry by Eugène Manuel, and illustrations for a magazine of the theater arts, called La Costume au théâtre.

In the political turmoil of the 1930s, Mucha's work received little attention in Czechoslovakia. However, in 1936 a major retrospective was held in Paris at the Jeu de Paume museum, with 139 works, including three canvases from the Slav Epic.

Hitler and Nazi Germany began to threaten Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. Mucha, began work on a new series, a triptych depicting the Age of Reason, the Age of Wisdom and the Age of Love, which he worked on from 1936 to 1938, but never completed. On March 15, 1939, the German army paraded through Prague, and Hitler, at Prague castle, declared the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Mucha's role as a Slav nationalist and Freemason made him a prime target. He was arrested, interrogated for several days, and released. By then his health was broken. He contracted and died of pneumonia on July 14, 1939, a few weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War. Though public gatherings were banned, a huge crowd attended his interment in the Slavin Monument of Vyšehrad cemetery, reserved for notable figures in Czech culture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonse_Mucha

Mucha Foundation
http://www.muchafoundation.org/
Mucha Museum in Prague
http://www.mucha.cz/index.phtml?S=home&Lang=EN

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