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Mucha and Monaco
2010-08-24 12:36
Last month, you may have seen this Google Doodle celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of the artist
Alphonse Mucha. But who was he, and what has he to do with Monaco?
The fact that his name is normally spelt as Alphonse is due to the fact that Mucha found fame and fortune in France, but in fact he was born Alfons Mucha in Moravia, in today's southern Czech Republic. The Count of Mikulov, whose castle Mucha had been commissioned to decorate with murals, paid for his training in Munich, and at the age of 27, Mucha moved to Paris - the destination of choice for all aspiring artists.
He didn't have to wait long for his big break - a theatre poster advertising the celebrated actress Sarah Bernhardt, whose costumes he went on to design. More commissions followed, including, famously, posters for champagne giants
Moet et Chandon and Chemins de Fer, the French railway company. One of the best-known of all his images is this railway poster for Monaco (can you spot the
Casino?)
Filled with graceful female forms, flowing dresses and flowers, Mucha's classically-inspired drawings soon became collectors' items. The exciting new design was known as 'Mucha style' but it was easier to call it simply 'new art', and that is what the world still calls it today -
Art Nouveau.
The timing was perfect. Europe at the turn of the 20th century was in need of a defining artistic movement, and this was it. Soon theatres, town halls and other public buildings were being redecorated in the Mucha style, and Alfons himself became internationally famous, returning after the First World War to Prague where he designed the first banknotes and stamps for the newly-independent Czechoslovakia.
The eighty-year old Mucha died from pneumonia in 1939 shortly after interrogation by the Gestapo. His son's second wife, the Scottish-born composer Geraldine Mucha, still lives in the artist's residence in Prague, where his legacy survives on practically every street corner.
In Monaco, even today his influence can be seen in the redesigned
Café de Paris, whose modern Art-Nouveau-style glass panels reproduce the style of this celebrated artist.
Watch more on this fascinating story:
Alex Went