Most people who are familiar in passing with Art Nouveau artist Alphonse (Alfons) Mucha (see my recent post on Alphonse Mucha on Gallica Digital Library) are not aware of his body of work that is in a very different style.
The most important and striking examples of this are a series of 20 very large canvasses called The Slav Epic, which Mucha considered the most important work of his lifetime and the culmination of his artistic career.
The paintings tell the history of Slavic people, and are housed in a castle in the small town of Moravský. There is long standing controversy about plans to bring them to Prague.
The paintings are little known outside of the Czech Republic and images of them are not readily available. There are few, if any, in most books on Mucha, though Mucha by Sarah Mucha is listed as containing some information and images on the Slav Epic paintings, even if incomplete. I haven’t seen the book myself.
There are a few scattered examples on the web, notably on the Mucha Foundation, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons and a complete set with commentary on the site of John Price, and an even better, larger set on the blog, A Journey Through Slavic Culture.
There is also a post on the Golden Age Comic Book Stories blog that features alternate states and preliminary photographs of some of the works.
[Golden Age Comic Book Stories link via @francisvallejo]
