Alphonse Mucha
From Slavic.info
Alphonse Mucha, Czech artist, was born 24 July 1860 in Ivančice, Morava as Alfons Maria Mucha. He showed artistic talent since early childhood. He gained his education in Brno, Vienna, Munich, and finally in Paris. There in 1897 he got his chance, when he offered to make another poster for the most famous actress of that time, Sarah Bernhardt, who wasn't satisfied with her poster for "Gismonda". But she was so stunned when she saw Mucha's version, that she insisted to have her posters designed only by him. Overnight he became sensation in Paris and Mucha-style was the high fashion. There his fame began, and nowadays he is known as the best artist from Art Nouveau/Secession/Jugendstill era. He was highly appreciated in France, in USA they called him "the most famous man of decorative art", but in his fatherland he still wasn't recognized, and yet it was what he wanted the most. His feelings for his country were strong, as well as for other Slavic countries, specially for Russia, where he felt with its people under the involuntary servitude, end of which he captured on one of 20 canvases of the Slavic Epic, and the many more harms that Russian nation suffered. He was deeply horrified by the Bolshevistic Revolution in 1918.
Mucha considered himself a Pan-Slavist. He was friends with industrialist Charles R. Crane (1858 – 1939), a Russophile himself, who was very interested in Pan-Slavism. Crane commissioned some of Mucha's paintings, and made portrait of Crane's daughter Josephine, which later appeared on one of bills which Mucha designed for the new Czecho-Slovakian currency.
