PRAGUE: A new Prague museum dedicated to the Czech Art Nouveau painter Alfons Mucha will offer “art for everyone” when it opens this month, ultimately housing his giant Slav Epic masterpiece after decades in storage, his great-grandson said.
A painter, graphic artist and designer, Mucha (1860-1939) gained fame for his floral posters, especially of French actress Sarah Bernhardt, which he made while living in Paris — and his work later helped inspire the hit Disney film “Frozen”, according to his descendant.
The museum in the Baroque Savarin Palace in Prague’s Unesco-listed historic centre will display over 100 works, including paintings, lithographs and sketches, from Feb 24. It will also provide a long-sought home for Mucha’s grand Slav Epic cycle.
British-born Marcus Mucha, who heads a foundation managing the artist’s legacy, said that the museum would offer “art for everyone” in line with his great-grandfather’s philosophy. “He always said: ‘I did not want my art to be for the salons of the elite’.
He thought of his posters in Paris as making the streets and squares an open-air art gallery for everybody.” Most of the artwork on display comes from the family collection comprising some 4,000 artworks.
The museum will also display four smaller reproductions of his Slav Epic, a cycle of 20 canvases ranging in size from 20 to 50 square metres. Mucha spent 18 years on the work depicting moments from the history and mythology of the Slavic peoples.
He finished it in 1928, 10 years after Czechoslovakia became independent following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Published in Dawn, February 5th, 2025
