Alphonse Mucha – The Founder of Art Nouveau
Sarah Bernhardt, 1896Art Nouveau is for many an instantly-recognised style, and the illustrations and graphic works of Alphonse Mucha are inextricably (much like the motifs) associated with it.
He was most famous for the sinuous lines and florals of his commercial art, and understandably so – no other artist has truly matched the lightness and joie de vivre present in his illustrative oeuvre, not even the pyschadelic art of the 1960s when Art Nouveau experienced a revival of interest.
Salon of the Hundred, 1896
Job, 1896Yet Mucha would have preferred to concentrate on more artistic projects. What has survived for over a century in the collective public imagination though, are his illustrations of the actress Sarah Bernhardt; ladies wreathed in the smoke of Job’s cigarettes and their own tresses writhing in the air; personifications of seasons and evening stars; and ladies advertising products from chocolate to champagne.
Champenois Imprimeur Éditeur, 1897Mucha (1860–1939) began his career painting theatrical scenery in Moravia (present day Czech Republic) and moved on to portrait painting. After studying in Paris, he achieved fame virtually overnight through a commission for a new advertising poster for a play featuring Sarah Bernhardt. He was simply in the right place at the right time, visiting a print shop just as the need arise. He took two weeks to produce a lithograph that thrilled Bernardt, and culminated into a six-year contract with the actress.
It also established him as an artist. He produced all kinds of graphic media in his distinctive style, as well as designs for jewellery, wallpaper, carpets and theatre sets. Initially dubbed ‘Mucha Style’, it was later known as Art Nouveau (French for ‘new art’), so it can truly be said that Alphonse Mucha was its founder.
The style was spread internationally by the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris – what an irony then that the founder of Art Nouveau struggled afterwards to disassociate himself from it. His frustration is comprehensible in light of his declaration that ‘art existed only to communicate a spiritual message, nothing more’. But surely there is still a place for lyrical beauty and a celebration of colour in this world.
See more of Alphonse Mucha’s work at Wikipaintings.
Chocolate Ideal, 1897
Chocolate Masson, 1897
Zodiac, 1897
(Left) Summer, 1897, and (right), Ruby
Spring and Summer, 1897