Alphonse Mucha

Alphonse Mucha’s ornate illustrations of elegant women surrounded by stylised flowers and flamboyant swirling lines were everywhere in the nineteenth century. Seven years after Czech artist Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) arrived in Paris he became world-famous overnight with his poster Gismonda (1894), designed for theatre superstar Sarah Bernhardt. Le style Mucha soon became synonymous with Art Nouveau, the modern art movement that came to define the look of the French capital. This spring, in collaboration with the Mucha Foundation, Kunstmuseum Den Haag will be showing a large selection of the posters and illustrations that made Alphonse Mucha so famous, alongside items from Kunstmuseum Den Haag’s own collection of colourful glass and spectacular costumes from the late nineteenth century, to give a unique impression of Mucha’s Paris – the place where it all began. The exhibition will also consider the rediscovery of Mucha's work in the 1960s, and how his style resonated in popular culture, flower power and Woodstock, as illustrated in the designs for albums covers and concert posters for bands like Martha & The Vandellas, The Rollings Stones and Pink Floyd. Kunstmuseum Den Haag will show the circumstances in which Alphonse Mucha became, and remains, world-famous.