Alphonse Maria Mucha
(1989 - Rizzoli International) 
[-BELOW THE LINE-] This is an extensive biography of the artist, written by his son, Jiri Mucha. Having the large-ish dimensions of 12-x-10 inches, with its 300 pages, it is about twice as thick (and heavy) as it should be. Since only 122 of those pages could be said to be dominated the man's drawn or painted art, it just misses getting up on to The List. Another 30 pages are given over to photographs and examples of his jewelry & sculpture. Note that there are six fold-outs that are comprised of 24 of the pages. Anyway, the rest of the pages become the life story of Mucha, from his beginnings in his Moravian village, thru his Art Nouveau fame in Paris and then back to his homeland, that had by then become part of the new country, Czechoslovokia. Almost all of the art is captioned with its title or use, along with the origination year. I would say that while there is a good representation of the special panels and posters he was so celebrated for, a majority of the work here are other painting projects that are not collected as much. In fact, there seems to be 49 well-presented pieces here that are not seen that way in the four Mucha books up on the list, if seen at all. The book also includes a well-presented portrait of Mucha drawn by David Ossipovitch Widhopff. Some of the fold-outs mentioned above are used to provide very large reproductions of a few of The Slav Epic canvases. Note that Jiri Mucha is also the author of the smaller volume ALPHONSE MUCHA - POSTERS AND PHOTOGRAPHS, but it doesn't even score as high as this volume.
Related Books
Alphonse Mucha - Posters And Photographs [BELOW THE LINE]
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