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Alfons Mucha Audio|Cs-Alfons Mucha.ogg|listen
(July 24, 1860 - July 14, 1939) was a Czechs|Czech
painter and decorative artist. His first name is
also sometimes rendered in English as Alphonse. 
Mucha was perhaps the most defining artist of the
Art Nouveau style. 

Alfons Maria Mucha was born in the town of
Ivančice, Moravia. His singing abilities allowed
him to continue his education through high-school
in the Moravian capital of Brno, although drawing
had been his first love since childhood.  He
worked at decorative painting jobs in Moravia,
mostly painting theatrical scenery, then in 1879
moved to Vienna to work for a leading Viennese
theatrical design company, while informally
furthering his artistic education.  When a fire
destroyed his employer's business in 1881 he
returned to Moravia, doing freelance decorative
and portrait painting.  Count Karl Khuen of
Mikulov hired Mucha to decorate Hrušovany
Emmahof Castle with murals, and was impressed
enough that he agreed to sponsor Mucha's formal
training at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts.  

Mucha moved to Paris in 1887, and continued his
studies at Académie Julian and Academie Colarossi
while also producing magazine and advertising
illustrations.

In 1894, he produced the artwork for a
lithographed poster advertising Sarah Bernhardt at
the Theatre de la Renaissance. Mucha's lush
stylized poster art won him fame and numerous
commissions. 

Mucha produced a flurry of paintings, posters,
advertisements, and book illustrations, as well as
designs for jewellery, carpets, wallpaper, and
theatre sets in what came to be known as the Art
Nouveau style.  Mucha's works frequently featured
beautiful healthy young women in flowing vaguely
Neoclassicism|Neoclassical looking robes, often
surrounded by lush flowers which sometimes formed
halo (religious symbol)|haloes behind the women's
heads. His style was often imitated.

Mucha visited the United States|USA from 1906 to
1910, then returned to the Czech lands and settled
in Prague, where he decorated the Theater of Fine
Arts and other landmarks of the city.

When Czechoslovakia won its independence after
World War I, Mucha designed the new postage
stamps, banknotes, and other government documents
for the new nation. 

He spent decades working on what he considered his
masterpiece, The Slav Epic (Slovanská epopej), a
series of huge paintings depicting the history of
the Slavic peoples, unveiled in Prague in 1928.
The series was never finished.

He died in Prague July 14, 1939 and was interred
there in the Vyšehrad cemetery.

By the time of his death, Mucha's style was
considered outdated and old-fashioned, but
interest in his art revived first in the 1960s,
and continues to experience periodic revivals of
interest and influence on contemporary
illustrators. Much of the interest in Mucha's work
can be attributed to his son, author Jiří Mucha,
who wrote extensively about his father and devoted
much of his life to bringing attention to his
father's art. 

==External links==
commons|Alfons Mucha
*
http://www.muchafoundation.org/mucha/pg-front.html
Website of the Mucha Foundation
* http://www.mucha.cz/index.phtml?S=biog&Lang=EN
Biography on Mucha Museum website
* http://www.mucha.cz/index.phtml?S=home&Lang=EN
Website of Mucha Museum in Prague
* http://artchive.com/artchive/M/mucha.html Mark
Harden's Artchive webpage on Alfons Mucha

lived|b=1860|d=1939|key=Mucha, Alfons