Mucha's life's work
Famous for his Paris posters, he regarded these canvases as his real work.
RomanM82 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · donald judge — CC BY 2.0 · donald judge — CC BY 2.0 · donald judge — CC BY 2.0
A Czech artist (1860-1939) who became a star in Paris in the 1890s with his posters for Sarah Bernhardt's plays, and whose style — women with flowing hair, plant borders and muted colour — became the defining image of Art Nouveau itself. He later returned home and devoted his last years to the Slav Epic. The Gestapo arrested him in 1939 after the Nazi occupation, and he died months after his release.
Mucha gave the Epic to the city of Prague on condition it build a dedicated hall for it, which never happened. It was shown at Moravský Krumlov for decades, then Prague sought its return, and the two sides have exchanged lawsuits and temporary agreements for years. The practical upshot for a visitor: always check before travelling.
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A Renaissance château in a small town south-west of Brno, and the place where Alphonse Mucha's Slav Epic is displayed. The Epic is twenty vast canvases — the largest over six metres by eight — painted by Mucha between 1911 and 1926 to tell the history of the Slavic peoples. Mucha was world-famous for his elegant Art Nouveau posters in Paris, but he regarded these paintings as his real life's work, spent sixteen years on them and gave them to the city of Prague. What followed is unfortunate: the work moved between locations, was shown at Moravský Krumlov for decades, and then became the subject of long disputes between the town and Prague over where it should be permanently displayed, with the arrangement still liable to change. For that reason specifically: check before travelling that the canvases are actually on display at the château on your date. When they are, this is among the most powerful things to see in the whole of Moravia.
Famous for his Paris posters, he regarded these canvases as his real work.
He spent them on the Epic and then gave it to the city of Prague.
The canvases are large beyond what any reproduction conveys.
Moravský Krumlov, about forty kilometres south-west of Brno