This fascinating, busy but overpriced museum features the sensuous art-nouveau posters, paintings and decorative panels of Alfons Mucha (1860–1939), as well as many sketches, photographs and other memorabilia. The exhibits include countless artworks showing Mucha’s trademark Slavic maidens with flowing hair and piercing blue eyes, bearing symbolic garlands and linden boughs.
There are also photos of the artist’s Paris studio, one of which shows a trouserless Gaugin playing the harmonium; a powerful canvas entitled Old Woman in Winter; and the original of the 1894 poster of actress Sarah Bernhardt as Giselda, which shot him to international fame. In 1910 Mucha was invited to design the Lord Mayor's Hall in Prague's Municipal House, and following the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, he designed the new nation's banknotes and postage stamps.
The fascinating video documentary about Mucha’s life is well worth watching, and helps put his achievements in perspective.
