Mucha!

I figured I'd research Mucha now otherwise I would be thinking about studying him all year while I was studying everyone else. The work I chose to replicate was the one that made me fall in love with Mucha's work in the first place. I think this illustration he did for Job rolling paper really encompasses how magnificent his work is...

Alfons Maria Mucha was born in Ivancice, Moravia of the Austrian Empire--currently the Czech Repub.--on July 24th 1860. He loved art from art from an early age, but ironically, the only reason he was able to continue to high school was because he had a good singing voice. Mucha started off his early career as a set painter for theatrical plays, but after his theater of employment burnt down he fell back on his own abilities as a freelance painter back in his home town. After being commissioned a series of murals for Count Karl Khuen he attended the Mnich Academy of Fine Arts and was in fact sponsored by Khuen himself. Mucha continued his study of the arts in Paris in 1887. It wasn't until he volenteered to illustrate a lithograph poster for a play at the Theatre de la Renaissance that he made a name for himself...but it only took hours after his posters were hanging in Paris.

Mucha is characterized by his Art Nouveau style, meaning his extensive use of floral and ornate motifs. His work often includes images of beautiful nymphish young women decked out in Neoclassical attire and use of pale colors. He lived and made art up until 1939, when the goose-stepping Gestapo arrested him (one of the first in the country- probably the biggest compliment the Nazis could give anyone) resaulting in him catching pnemonia and his eventual death. His works went on to influence the likes of Paul Harvey and Kevin Warden; neither of which I know and am going to check out as soon as I finish this. His artwork still lives on not only in books and museums but in the re-emergence of his style in many rock n' roll posters of the 60's and 70's.

Hope you dig Mucha as much as I do

-Casey