MUCHA: Master Artist
of Art Nouveau
Text by Stacy Kendall
ALPHONSE MUCHA WAS
Alphonse Mucha,
Le Mois Litteraire et Pittoresque,
March 1899;
Collection of Patrick M. Rowe.
one of the most significant
artists of the era of modern art. Unlike many of his
contemporaries, such as
Paul Gauguin and Vincent
van Gogh, Mucha achieved
international fame and success before his death. Born
in 1860 in the central Euro-
pean town of Ivančice in
Moravia, he was a man of
humble origin, raised in a
family of modest means.
Early in life, Mucha’s father,
a minor bureaucrat in the
legal system, desired that
his son would eventually
enter the priesthood. However, throughout his youth,
Mucha had always had a
talent and passion for drawing, and after his exposure
to fine art during his teenage
years, he abandoned his religious path and developed a
resolve to create art.
In 1879, at the age of 19,
Mucha moved to Vienna
where he began taking
drawing classes and started
an apprenticeship as a scene
painter for Kautski-Brioschi-Burghardt, a manufacturer of theatrical sets.
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