Alphonse Mucha

RESEARCH ON ALPHONSE MUCHA

Born in the Czech Republic in 1860, Alphonse Mucha was a painter and illustrator who had such a profound involvement in the start of Art Nouveau that initially it was instead called "The Mucha Style" by some. Like much of the style, he focused mainly on female portraiture and organic objects, flowing hair and robes and lavishly applied flora and fauna.

Key Points:

• Women were a common theme in Mucha's work (and in Art Nouveau art in general). The femme nouvelle or "new woman" type was a favorite subject, since it served both allegorical and decorative purposes. Indeed, Mucha and his peers celebrated femininity as the antidote to an overly-industrialized, impersonal, "masculine" world.

• Mucha worked in a variety of media that were accessible to a wide audience, and so the reach of his art extended beyond the borders of "high art." He took the notion that everything could be a work of art, encompassing a person's daily experience, from wallpaper to furniture to clothing to promotional posters around the city.

• Although Mucha is most associated with his Art Nouveau posters, he spent the latter of half of his career focused on projects of a nationalist character. Stirred by a pride in his country and an interest in its artistic traditions, Mucha sought to celebrate the history and mores of Czech culture.

 I like usage of organic subject matter to push back against a heavily industrialised world, which is something I also try to do in my own work. The fact that his art was translated into posters which allowed the public to access and view them freely is also a feature which draws parallels with my own street work, along with his views that anything could be a work of art to enrich a person's environment.

The way he uses graphic elements, shapes and strong outlines is timeless and still holds a lot of modern design credibility to this day yet his sepia tones also give a historic effect. I also find the way he creates borders around his work really aesthetically pleasing, with shapes and cutouts giving a kind of stencil or stained glass window appearance.