Alfons Maria Mucha (1860–1939) was a Czech painter, graphic artist and illustrator and is regarded as one of the most important representatives of the Jugendstil. On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his birth, the Austrian Post Office is now issuing a special commemorative, with a motif showing the work entitled “La Plume” (colour lithograph, original size 64.5 x 48 cm).

Mucha, who began his career as a self-taught artist, was rejected by the Prague Academy of Arts. From 1879 to 1881, he therefore attended a Vienna school for stage decoration, while at the same time going to evening classes in drawing. In 1882, he received his first major commission, namely the interior design of the neobaroque Moravian palace of Emin Zámek near Hrušovany nad Jevišovkou; subsequently, Mucha executed further paintings in

 the family castle of the Khuen-Belasi Gandegg family at Eppan in South Tyrol.

On the occasion of the World Exhibition, the young artist was finally drawn to Paris, at the time the artistic Eldorado per se. Small commissions for various book illustrations helped him eke out a meagre living, and for a few weeks he shared a studio with the famous French painter Paul Gauguin. His breakthrough was due to the actress Sarah Bernhardt, who in winter 1894 was looking for an artist to design the poster for the play “Gismonda”, since her usual artist had backed out of the job. Mucha was given the commission, and as a result his posters appeared more or less overnight throughout Paris. They were so popular that almost all of them were removed by art lovers; Mucha was at a stroke one of the most highly-demanded poster painters of the Belle Epoque. Two years later, again for Sarah Bernhardt, he designed a poster for La Dame aux Camélias that is often regarded as one of the early highlights of Jugendstil graphics art. At the same time he also began to make designs for shares and bonds – and insurance policies too impressively bear Mucha’s unmistakable artistic signature.

In 1904, now a Knight of the French Legion d’honneur, Mucha went to the USA for two years to teach at the academies of fine arts in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. After the First World War, Mucha returned to Czechoslovakia, where he continued to work as an artist, designing for instance stamps (including the first stamp in 1918 with the motif of the Hradjin), banknotes and medals for the still young country. Financially independent, he lived with his wife and two children in a palace north of Prague. After the German troops invaded in 1939, Mucha was one of the first to be interred, dying shortly afterwards of the effects of severe pneumonia.

Release Date: 2010|07|23
Number of Copies: 250.000
Printing Style: Offset
Design: Michael Rosenfeld
Printed by: Österreichische Staatsdruckerei
Type: Special issue stamp

published July 29th, 2010