Alphonse Mucha (1860 to 1939) was a Czech painter and designer from Moravia who became famous in Paris in 1895 with a theater poster of Sarah Bernhardt. His flowing women framed by flowers became the face of Art Nouveau, a label he rejected. He wanted to be remembered for the Slav Epic, twenty giant canvases on Slavic history, and he died in Prague in July 1939, months after the Gestapo questioned him.
Most people who type his name want the posters: the calm young women, the halos of stars and flowers, the hair that curls across the page like ribbons. He drew them for a theater star, for champagne, for cigarette papers. The paintings he cared about were rolled up and hidden from the Nazis.
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On 26 December 1894, Sarah Bernhardt, the most famous actress in Europe, ordered a poster for her play Gismonda. She needed it by 1 January. The order went to the Paris printing house Lemercier, and the illustrator who got the job was a Moravian of thirty-four who had spent seven years in Paris drawing for magazines.
The poster went up on 1 January 1895. Bernhardt ordered 4,000 copies and signed him to a six-year contract. Within a year Paris had a name for what he did: le style Mucha.
He never accepted the credit. Asked about Art Nouveau, Mucha is reported to have answered that art can never be new, and he spent the rest of his life trying to get away from the style that made him rich.
What You'll Discover
Why Prague told him to quit.
What six years with Bernhardt bought.
What gives a Mucha away.
Who paid for his real masterpiece.
Why the Gestapo came for him.