Alphonse Mucha, Self-portrait in a Russian shirt (roubachka) in the studio in the rue de la Grande-Chaumière (detail), Paris, 1882. Modern print from the original negative on glass plate, Prague, Mucha Trust collections © Mucha Trust 2018

Alphonse Mucha is an artist who is both famous and unknown. Famous for sometimes giving his
name to Art Nouveau, of which he was undoubtedly the most popular representative. Unknown for its
immense ambition of painter dedicated to the national cause of his country of origin, which was not called
not yet the Czech Republic, and of the Slavic peoples. The exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg, the first
dedicated to the artist in the capital since the retrospective of the Grand Palais in 1980, proposes
so rediscover the first Mucha and discover the second, give back to this prolific artist
all its artistic, political and spiritual complexity.

Born in 1860 in Moravia, Mucha arrived in Paris in 1887 and began a career as an illustrator.
In December 1894, it was his meeting with the great tragedian, Sarah Bernhardt, who launched
his poster career. He produced for her the poster for Gismonda, a play by Victorien Sardou,
first of a long series of advertising or simply decorative posters, varying endlessly
repertoire of female figures interspersed with flowers and graphic scrolls, which will bring him
immense notoriety and the friendship of artists like Gauguin or Rodin. He is also requested
for decoration work, by the jeweler Georges Fouquet, or illustration for books.

But from 1900 and on the occasion of the Universal Exhibition, he undertook to design a project which
depicts the history and civilization of the Czech people and the Slavic peoples. This company, tinted
of a humanist philosophy, Freemason, will occupy it the last thirty years of his career
and lead him to paint gigantic canvases, for which he produced an abundant quantity
preparatory studies for virtuoso drawing.

This retrospective therefore shows not only the posters which made it famous, but also its
wonderful illustrator plates, his paintings, his photographs, jewelry, sculptures, pastels
which allow visitors to discover all the diversity of his art.

Pratical information

Luxembourg Museum
19, rue Vaugirard, 75006 Paris

opening : every day from Monday to Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 19 p.m.
Nocturne until 22 p.m. every Friday and Monday from November 12 to December 17
December 24 and 31 opening from 10:30 a.m. to 18 p.m.
Closed on December 25

prices : € 13; TR € 9, special Young 16-25 years old: € 9 for 2 people Monday to Friday after 16 p.m.
Free for children under 16, beneficiaries of social minima.

access: M ° St Sulpice or Mabillon
Luxembourg Rer B
Bus: 58; 84; 89; Luxembourg Museum / Senate stop

information and reservations: museeduluxembourg.fr