Mucha Museum

Alfons Mucha became famous overnight in Paris on 1 January 1895, when a poster he had designed in a hurry over Christmas for Sarah Bernhardt's Gismonda appeared on the streets; the tall narrow format, the pale palette and the halo behind the head were copied within months and the style was called le style Mucha before it was called Art Nouveau. The museum holds the Paris decade: theatre posters, the decorative panel sets of the seasons and the flowers, advertising work for biscuits and cigarette papers, jewellery designs for Fouquet, and drawings. It also makes the point Mucha himself insisted on - that he regarded the commercial work as a means and the Slav Epic, the twenty history canvases he spent eighteen years on, as his real work; there is a film on that. The museum is private and separate from the National Gallery holdings.

History

The Swiss entrepreneur Sebastian Pawlowski bought and renovated the Kounice Palace on condition from the Prague authorities that it be used for a cultural purpose, and approached Geraldine Mucha with the idea of a gallery of Mucha's work. The museum opened in 1998 as a joint venture between Pawlowski and the Mucha Foundation, showing works from the Mucha Trust Collection. The Foundation later looked for larger premises, as the old ones were crowded, and by May 2024 it had ended its ties with the museum, which now holds the largest part of Ivan Lendl's collection of Mucha's work (Wikipedia, Mucha Museum (Kounice Palace)).

What you'll find

• The Gismonda poster - the 1895 design that started the style overnight.
• Decorative panel sets - the seasons, the flowers and the arts, in series.
• Commercial work - advertising, jewellery designs and packaging.
• A film on the Slav Epic - the project Mucha considered his real work.

When to go

All year. Two hours.

Good to know

It is a small private museum, an hour or two, and priced at Prague centre rates. The Slav Epic itself is not here. Photography is restricted. It gets crowded in the middle of the day.

Nearby

The Municipal House and Wenceslas Square are short walks away.

Key facts