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Alphonse Mucha
(1860-1939)
Alphonse Mucha did not create Art Nouveau, but his
work, especially as a poster artist, came to symbolize the full
flowering of the style and the era. Born in Moravia, in what is now part
of Czechoslovakia, Mucha worked as a painter of theatrical signs and
court murals in Vienna and studied art in Munich. He arrived in Paris in
the late 1880s, just as posters were emerging as the most popular art
form of the day, due in part to the relatively new color printing
process, chromolithography. Mucha struggled to make a living as a
graphic artist, producing book illustrations, calendar art and other
decorative designs, until he received a commission to do a poster for
Sarah Bernhardt in "Gismonda." The poster, which appeared on January
1,1895, marked a sharp break with previous poster design. The legendary
Sarah and the public adored it, and its phenomenal success made Mucha a
celebrity and the creator of images that embodied an entire era. |
