The Mucha Museum, a new institution centered on Czech artist Alphonse Mucha, a key figure behind the Art Nouveau movement, will open a new space in Prague near the city’s historic Old Town Square after ending a long-term agreement with its former operator.
Located within the restored Baroque Savarin palace on Na Prikope street in central Prague and recently renovated by the Prague-based real estate developer Crestyl, the space will house Mucha’s works, including lithographs and posters made as promotional materials for plays.
Mucha, whose output was primarily decorative panels and advertisements, grew popular after designing the poster for the 1894 Greek tragedy Gismonda, a four-act play featuring actress Sarah Bernhardt, who Mucha used as the image’s central figure.
Images from the highly-stylized poster led to him becoming widely recognized in the 1890s, while working in Paris, and his style eventually generated associations with modern design.
A statement distributed by the Mucha Foundation and Crestyl said the Savarin project will occupy over 1,100 meters in exhibition space (or around 12,000 square feet). The foundation will rotate exhibitions emphasizing Mucha’s reach in design and advertising, influencing imagery that circulated during his lifetime and after his death in 1939.
Mucha’s work had been the subject of a complex legal dispute with the city in the past. John Mucha, the artist’s grandson and president of the Mucha Foundation, which the artist’s relatives established in 1992 to organize exhibitions about him, brought a lawsuit against the city of Prague over the relocation of Mucha’s 20-panel installation Slav Epic.
There were disagreements over whether Prague had ownership rights over the works, after failing to build a pavilion for their permanent display, a term that was originally laid out in Mucha’s donation agreement to the capital.
The new Savarin location will have a larger floor plan more than its previous location nearby on Pánská street. The artist’s foundation plans to relocate the works from that building, which has housed the collection’s since 1998.
In a statement to the Art Newspaper, Marcus Mucha, the artist’s great-grandson and executive director of the foundation, claimed that it no longer has any official affiliation with the former operator of the museum’s previous location on Pánská after ending their agreement in May.
Mucha added that any shows or operations there related to Mucha are unauthorized.
