PRODUCT DESCRIPTION

Scans of all the cards are in the item gallery.

24 of the art of Art Nouveau master's most famous posters - exquisitely reproduced as full-colour cards. Text by Jack Rennett. Cards are all detachable. Fold along perforation before detaching card.

No artist was more influential during the golden age of the poster than Alphonse Maria Mucha (1860 - 1939), whose striking, ornate artwork sent his career soaring in the 1890s. This card collection reproduces in sumptuous full-colour twenty four of the Art Nouveau master's most famous posters and panels. Displaying his preference for gentle pastels, elaborate borders, and beautiful women, the pocket sized masterpieces include Zodiac, one of the art is most popular and enduring designs; Sarah Bernhardt/La Plume; the richly decorative Reverie; the rare Cognac Bisquit; and 20 other works of art.

Ideal for use as distinctive stationery and bookmarks, the attractive cards are accompanied by descriptive paragraphs that include title, printer, date, and other relevant data.

INNER PAGE TEXT

By Jack Rennert.

The postcards in this book reproduce the work of Alphonso Mucha (1860 - 1939), a Moravian artist who set all Paris agog in the mid 1890s with his ornate posters of Sarah Bernhardt. It was the golden era of the poster as well a of a new trend in art - Art Nouveau. Mucha took the fledgling art form, developed its style and stated its premise perhaps more clearly than anyone else, becoming so closely associated with its most spectacular flowering that it was known for a time as style Mucha.

Mucha was born in Ivancice, a small village in what was then Austria - Hungary and later became part of Czechoslovakia; his native tongue was Czech. His father, a minor court official, envisioned for him a clerical career, but Alphonse opted for art and set out to seek his fortune abroad. By a series of coincidences, he came to the attention of a wealthy landowner who commissioned him to do some murals; when he completed them, the client became his patron and sent him to study first in Munich, later in Paris.

For a time, it looked as if he was destined to become nothing more spectacular than a book illustrator and calendar designer, but chance intervened again, and he was asked to execute a rush order for Sarah Bernhardt, the reigning queen of the stage in Paris. When she approved of his work and assigned him more of it, keeping him closely aligned With her, Mucha's reputation soared virtually overnight.

From 1893 to 1903, Mucha's atelier was not only the source of magnificent posters, and also the centre of a Bohemian coterie that included many major artists and writers of the era, including Gauguin, Verlaine and Strindberg. Then in 1903, Mucha received a visit from a 21 year old student from his native country, Maruska Chytilova, and a romance developed that changed his life.

Eager to marry and to leave commercial art, b>Mucha embarked on a plan to see Sarah Bernhardt's connections in the United States to make some real money and be free to paint what he really wanted. During his American period (1904 - 1912), he painted portraits of society ladies and designs theatrical decor, producing comparatively few posters. But he kept close contacts in the theatrical world, doing work for such stage luminaries as Mrs Leslie Carter, Maude Adams and Ethel Barrymore.

For the third time, chance came to his rescue, and he met a wealthy industrialist, Charles R. Crane, who agreed to sponsor Mucha's ambitious project - the Slav Epic, a series of huge canvases spotlighting the little-known history of his native people. With Crane's financial backing, Mucha settled in Prague and for the rest of his life devoted himself to his pet undertaking. He still prepared few sporadic posters, for friends or for causes he believed in.

This selection contains some of Mucha's best designs, largely from his Paris period. He is, as can be seen at a glance, a master draftsman with a sure grip of design and a sensitive colorist with a predilection for gentle pastels. His decorative ideas, using mostly motifs from nature in elaborate borders and space dividers, set a standard in his day. He taught art in Paris and in various Art institutes in the US, and yhis books on the subject served as texts in many art schools for generations.

Mucha's legacy has never lost its appeal, and he is among the few posterists - such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Cheret and Steinlen - whose original posters find a ready market among collectors and museum curators even today.

Jack Rennett
President
Postedrs Please, Inc.
New York City

CONDITION

New. Cover may have slight shelfwear but cards all in mint. (see scans).

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