Alphonse Mucha

OK, so I'm still in a Retro mood. If you were around the hippy scene in the 1960's, you probably remember Alphonse Mucha. His art was on everything from Zig-Zag rolling papers to Moet & Chandon champagne. Posters of "Mucha's women" adorned the walls of many night clubs, record shops & clothing stores. His colorful drawings were incorporated into advertising promo pieces for cultural events. There was Mucha wallpaper, carpeting, book illustrations, magazine ads, etc. My memories of that era are forever colored by his art.

Mucha's women were beautifully healthy, clothed in flowing neoclassical robes & usually surrounded by flowers. Their innocence shines through, even when provocatively posed. Mucha's art was so pervasive & seemed such a perfect representation of the flower child era, I never realized at the time that this was a revival for Mucha, who had died in 1939. He was born in 1860 in Moravia, a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that eventually became part of the modern Czech Republic. He had the great good fortune of achieving early commercial success within the Art Nouveau movement, which his bio says irked him since he thought it frivolous & unimportant (art critics did not agree). In 1939, as a 79-yr old still-active painter of nationalist pan-slavic history, Mucha was arrested by the Nazi Gestapo & died in prison.

If you have a few unoccupied moments, you can pass them quite pleasurably at a website called Olga's Gallery which features about 120 Mucha paintings, not only his early work, but also the later more political canvasses. You may notice I picked up an avatar at Olga's. The image reduction is such that I'm not happy with the final product. Any suggestions?