Featured Artists
Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939) began his artistic career as a painter of stage scenery in Vienna. Later, he worked as a painter-decorator of chateaus in Moravia and the Tirol. He studied art in Munich, but it was his move to Paris, where he enrolled in the Academie Julian in 1887, that marked a turning point in his life and oeuvre. From the early 1890s he illustrated many books and magazines. In 1894, his poster commissioned for Sarah Bernhardt in the role of Gismonda earned him wide public recognition. He designed an array of theatre posters featuring this popular actress in a the highly decorative Art Nouveau style. Designs for exhibition and advertising posters in the Art Nouveau idiom were also produced in his art workshop. He executed large-scale paintings for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Pavilion at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900. In 1902 and 1905, respectively, he published Documents Décoratifs and Figures Décoratives – two authoritative illustrated books on Art Nouveau ornament, with examples of decorative schemes.
Vojtěch Preissig (1873-1944) is one of the most accomplished figures in Czech modern book and graphic design, typography and the art of printing. In 1898, after completing his studies at the School of Applied Arts in Prague, he left for Paris, where he briefly trained in the studio of Alphonse Mucha. Afterwards, he studied graphic art and worked as a book illustrator. He contributed to the magazines L’Art Décoratif, L’Assiette au Beurre and other journals. He designed posters, wallpaper and decorative papers, and made small art prints. The decorative Art Nouveau style had a major impact on his creative output. The Colored Etchings album, printed in 1906, is regarded as Preissig’s seminal achievement that marked the peak of his Art Nouveau period.
A noted Czech artist, Franta Anýž (1876 - 1934) had a major influence on the development of applied arts in the field of metal-processing. He specialized in cast ironwork, metal-chasing, cold metalworking, medal-engraving and jewellery-making. After graduating from the School of Applied Arts in Prague in 1900, Anýž opened a prospering metal-processing firm. From among his early creations, his Art Nouveau jewellery, ironwork and book-binding deserve special attention.
The Harrach Glassworks at Neuwelt: With its three-hundred-year existence, the Harrach Glassworks in Nový Svět (Neuwelt) in the Krkonoše Mountains holds a prominent place among glass factories that have greatly contributed to the international renown of Bohemian glass. In every stage of the history of Bohemian glass from the early 18th century to the end of the 20th century, this glassworks has invariably played a progressive and frequently also determining role, both in terms of style and technology. The same is true of its production of glass objects in the Art Nouveau period.
