Alphonse Mucha-Pioneer of Modern Graphic Art

Alphonse Mucha

Alphonse Mucha (24 July 1860 – 14 July 1939) was a Czech Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist.

Mucha was famous for his commercial posters, which had a broad audience, but he also worked in a variety of other media, including furniture, jewelry, and theatrical sets. He essentially worked in Vienna as well as Paris, but was also in Chicago, where he taught at the Art Institute, from 1904 to 1910. There, he introduced his interpretation of the Art Nouveau aka “new art” to a United States audience. Art Nouveau is that it’s a style of decorative art, architecture, and design prominent in Western Europe and the USA.

Mucha was well-known for his images of women. 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.

Alphonse Mucha – Monaco Monte Carlo, 1897

Alphonso Mucha- Pioneer of Modern Graphic Art will be exhibited in Hangaram Art Museum at the Seoul Art Center until 5th of March 2017. This is the second exhibition that Mucha’s art will be exhibited within three years, following the success of the Mucha Foundation’s previous exhibition Alphonse Mucha: Art Nouveau and Utopia which showed at the same venue from July to September 2013.

This exhibition focuses on Mucha’s achievements as a founder of modern graphic design.

Best known for his theater posters for the superstar French actress Sarah Bernhardt and decorative panels featuring graceful women with flowers. His distinctive graphics became a trademark of the international Art Nouveau style, which spread across Europe and America around 1900. His design ideas, demonstrated in his wide range of works from posters and book illustrations to jewelry and packaging designs influenced not only his contemporaries but also new generations of graphic artists, including today’s comic artists as well as commercial designers.

Showing some 250 works from the Mucha Trust collection, along with the work of contemporary artists inspired by Mucha, this exhibition throws new light on Mucha’s work and how it contributed to the modern graphic design, as we know it today. So if you are in Seoul I would recommend you to go see this exhibition.

Details
Venue name: Hangaram Art Museum at the Seoul Art Center
Address: 2406, Nambusunhwan-ro, Seocho-gu, Seoul 137-718
Transport: Nambu Bus Terminal Station (Line 3), exit 5,
Price: Adult 15,000 won, teenager 10,000 won, child 8,000 won
Event website: http://www.sac.or.kr/eng/program/view.jsp?seq=27451&s_date=20161203

Source: ‘Timeout’ and ‘Mucha Foundation’

Amiira Ismail – The AsiaN Media Intern