The Breckon family (our daughters Lydia and Lara are with us in Florence for Christmas) has just visited the Mucha exhibition here – and what a great show it is, featuring the works of Alphonse Mucha, who might be regarded as the father of Art Nouveau.
The exhibition was in the wonderful Ospedale degli Innocenti, one of the masterpieces of my architectural hero Filippo Brunelleschi, the first classical building in Europe since Roman times. So, it is a double delight.
Coincidentally, my favourite online art magazine DailyArt has just run a feature on Mucha, so we are able to share some of our pleasure with you. Zuzanna Stanska writes: “Alphonse Mucha’s distinctive style was called le style Mucha, becoming synonymous with the Art Nouveau style. His posters have a very long and slimline, subtle pastel colours and a halo-like circular shape around the main figure, resembling a stained-glass window…
“Alphonse Mucha was born in 1860 in Moravia, today’s Czech Republic. The commission that brought him fame was for a theatrical production of Gismonda, played by the most famous Parisian actress of the lime, Sarah Bernhard. After this commission, Alphonse Mucha became one of the most popular poster designers.”
As well as theatrical promotions, Mucha was also much in demand for advertising posters, for anything from beer to biscuits and bicycles, and, of course, champagne:
I will leave you to enjoy some other Mucha posters in the DailyArt piece, by clicking here.
Before you go, here’s another (musical) hero: Mucha’s cover for the score of Puccini’s Turandot, published in 1926 by Riccordi.
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