Alphonse Mucha

Alphonse Mucha was a Czech painter and graphic artist who spent his early career in Paris, where his theatrical posters, especially those for Sarah Bernhardt, made him widely known during the Art Nouveau period. His distinctly stylized illustrations, advertisements, and decorative panels became among the best-known images of the era. At 57, he returned to his homeland and shifted entirely: between 1912 and 1926, he painted The Slav Epic, twenty monumental canvases depicting the history of all the Slavic peoples of the world. In 1928, on the tenth anniversary of Czechoslovakia's independence, he presented the series to the Czech nation. He considered it his most important work.