Alphonse Maria Mucha Was Honored With a Google Doodle

Written by K.C. Kelly, Ph.D Saturday, 07 April 2012 22:17

Art Knowledge News -Alphonse Maria Mucha, (July 24, 1860- July 14, 1939), was an incredibly talented Czech Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist whose 150th birthday is being celebrated today with a gift from Google: a Google Doodle. Mucha was most known for his distinct style of paintings, illustrations, advertisements, and designs; mostly of women. See his Google Doodle below.

Alphonse Maria Mucha was born with singing abilities to add to his list of talents. His singing got him through school; however drawing was his true passion and what he pursued to the highest degree. Mucha worked at decorative painting jobs, mostly painting theatrical scenery to start.

During this time, he continued to further his artistic education in an informal way. In 1879, in Vienna, he worked for a leading Viennese theatrical design company, but moved back, in 1881 to Moravia, to do freelance decorative and portrait painting, just to start his lifelong artistic career.

His first big job was given to him by Count Karl Khuen of Mikulov who hired Mucha to decorate the Hrušovany Emmahof Castle with Mucha's original murals. The Count was so impressed that sponsored Mucha's formal artistic training at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts.

Mucha is mostly well known for his poster of Maude Adams as Joan of Arc, an advertising poster for a play at the Théâtre de la Renaissance on the Boulevard Saint-Martin starring Sarah Bernhardt, the most famous actress in Paris (who was so impressed that she entered into a six year contract with Mucha), a stained glass in Prague's St. Vitus Cathedral which was designed in the early 1930s, and the advertisement for the play Gismonda by Victorien Sardou which appeared on the streets of the city and became an overnight sensation as it announced Mucha and his new artistic style to the citizens of Paris.

Mucha worked for several years on what he called his life's fine art masterpiece; The Slav Epic (Slovanská epopej), a series of twenty huge paintings depicting the history of the Czech and the Slavic people in general, bestowed to the city of Prague in 1928.

Throughout his life, Mucha continued to produce a plethora of art of paintings, posters, advertisements, and book illustrations, as well as designs for jewelry, carpets, wallpaper, and theatre sets in what was initially called the Mucha Style but became known as Art Nouveau (French for 'new art'). His work mostly featured "beautiful, robust young women in flowing vaguely Neoclassical looking robes, often surrounded by lush flowers which sometimes formed haloes behind the women's heads."

During the rise of fascism, when German troops marched into Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1939, Mucha was among the first persons to be arrested by the Gestapo. During the course of his interrogation, the aging artist fell ill with pneumonia and passed away in 1939.

Today, Mucha is honored with a museum called the Official Mucha Museum which appears in Prague and is run by his grandson, John Mucha. The Official Mucha Museum in Prague contains by far the best collection of Mucha artworks in the world. Visit www.mucha.cz for more information.

The famous Czech artist is being sought by many people on the internet today since it is his birthday even despite the fact that this great artist is not with us today. Many people remember Alphonse Mucha for his works. He died at the age of seventy-eight in 1939.

On July 24th, 2010, Alphonse Maria Mucha was honored with a Google Doodle in memory of his 150th birthday.

Submitted by K.C. Kelly Ph.D. on 2010-07-24

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