GALLERY | ART POSTERS
Mucha produced a flurry of paintings, posters, advertisements, and book illustrations, as well as designs for jewellery, carpets, wallpaper, and theatre sets in what was initially called the Mucha Style but became known as Art Nouveau (French for 'new art'). Mucha's works frequently featured beautiful, strong young women in flowing vaguely Neoclassical looking robes, often surrounded by lush flowers which sometimes formed haloes behind the women's heads.
Title: Soap factory of Bagnolet Completion Date: 1897. Style: Art Nouveau (Modern). Genre: poster. Technique: lithography
The Moon and the Stars (series) (1902)
In this series of decorative panels, Mucha again chose to personify the stars as female figures. This time, however, he sought to surpass the panels' decorative function by exploring the deeper meaning of his subjects. The women are no longer confined to ornate crescents and alcoves, but instead float in space and are illuminated by a light radiating from within the composition. Their poses are meditative and dramatic rather than sensual. In all four panels, Mucha demonstrates great skill in rendering the texture and sheen of rich textiles.
“If anyone is destined to become an artist and follows this career led by a mysterious and irresistible force, then it is Mucha. . . . He submits without argument, as he himself says, to the commands of this watchful, protective force which propels him through life as if he were sleepwalking, placing before his feet at decisive moments the stops to success.”
(Victor Champier, quoted Mucha 95)
In contrast with contemporary poster makers he used pale pastel colors. The 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris spread the "Mucha style" internationally, of which Mucha said "I think [the Exposition Universelle] made some contribution toward bringing aesthetic values into arts and crafts." He decorated the Bosnia and Herzegovina Pavilion and collaborated in the Austrian Pavilion. His Art Nouveau style was often imitated.
Title: The Slav Epic (20 cycles) Year: 1890
The Art Nouveau style however, was one that Mucha attempted to distance himself from throughout his life; he always insisted that rather than adhering to any fashionable stylistic form, his paintings came purely from within and Czech art.
He declared that art existed only to communicate a spiritual message, and nothing more; hence his frustration at the fame he gained through commercial art, when he most wanted to concentrate on more lofty projects that would ennoble art and his birthplace.
Title: Nestlé's Food for Infants Year: 1897
