Alphonse Maria Mucha

Seventy large-size illustrations trace Mucha's skills as a draftsman over more than 40 years. Among the more famous examples are original plans and drawings for "The Seasons," and sketches for the Sarah Bernhardt poster.

Rare design portfolio by high priest of Art Nouveau. Jewelry, wallpaper, stained glass, furniture; figure studies; plant and animal motifs, much more. All 72 stunning plates from Documents Décoratifs in original color.

Comprised of 40 full-page, two-color plates of finished drawings in several media, this new volume reproduces Mucha's extraordinary 1905 style book, Figures Décoratives, a summation of Art Nouveau art and design. New introduction.

Published to accompany exhibition organized and circulated by Art Services International.

Though very much an individual and spiritual artist, Alphonse Mucha was a defining figure of the Art Nouveau era and is loved for his distinctive lush style and images of beautiful women in arabesque poses among the plethora of paintings, posters, advertisements and designs he produced. Admire a whole range of his work here in its full glory with succinct accompanying text.

Born in 1860 in a small Czech town, Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) was an artist on the forefront of Art Nouveau, the modernist movement that swept Paris in the 1910s, marking a return to the simplicity of natural forms, and changing the world of art and design forever. In fact, Art Nouveau was known to insiders as the “Mucha style” for the legions of imitators who adapted the master’s celebrated tableaux. Today, his distinctive depictions of lithe young women in classical dress have become a pop cultural touchstone, inspiring album covers, comic books, and everything in between. Patrick Bade and Victoria Charles offer readers an inspiring survey of Mucha’s career, illustrated with over one hundred lustrous images, from early Parisian advertisements and posters for Sandra Bernhardt, to the famous historical murals painted just before his death, at the age of 78, in 1939.