Living in Paris during the Art Nouveau period, he was widely known for his distinctly stylized and decorative theatrical posters, particularly those of Sarah Bernhardt.

[5] In the second part of his career, at the age of 57, he returned to his homeland and devoted himself to a series of twenty monumental symbolist canvases known as The Slav Epic, depicting the history of all the Slavic peoples of the world,[3] which he painted between 1912 and 1926.

Mucha was born on 24 July 1860 in the small town of Ivančice in southern Moravia,[6] then a province of the Austrian Empire (currently a region of the Czech Republic).

[9] Alphonse showed an early talent for drawing; a local merchant impressed by his work gave him a gift of paper, at the time a luxury item.

[9] His music teacher sent him to Pavel Křížkovský, choirmaster of St Thomas's Abbey in Brno, to be admitted to the choir and to have his studies funded by the monastery.

[9] Křížovský sent him to a choirmaster of the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul,[9] who admitted him as a chorister and funded his studies at the gymnasium in Brno, where he received his secondary school education.

[11] He also discovered Hans Makart, a very prominent academic painter, who created murals for many of the palaces and government buildings in Vienna, and was a master of portraits and historical paintings in grand format.

He lived in a boarding house called the Crémerie at 13 rue de la Grande Chaumière, whose owner, Charlotte Caron, was famous for sheltering struggling artists; when needed she accepted paintings or drawings in place of rent.

Mucha decided to follow the path of another Czech painter he knew from Munich, Ludek Marold, who had made a successful career as an illustrator for magazines.

Mucha continued to publish illustrations for his other clients, including for a children's book of poetry by Eugène Manuel and for a magazine of the theater arts called La Costume au théâtre.

[citation needed] At the end of 1894, Mucha's career took a dramatic and unexpected turn when he began to work for the French stage actress Sarah Bernhardt.

The poster was more than life-size; a little more than two meters high, with Bernhardt in the costume of a Byzantine noblewoman, dressed in an orchid headdress and a floral stole, and holding a palm branch in the Easter procession near the end of the play.

The top of the poster, with the title, was richly composed and ornamented, and balanced the bottom, where the essential information was given in the shortest possible form: just the name of the theater.

The magazine La Plume made a special edition devoted to his work, and his exhibition traveled to Vienna, Prague, Munich, Brussels, London, and New York, giving him an international reputation.

[34] The Paris Universal Exposition of 1900, famous as the first grand showcase of the Art Nouveau, gave Mucha an opportunity to move in an entirely different direction, toward the large-scale historical paintings which he had admired in Vienna.

Sarah Bernhardt stood up on his behalf, declaring in La France that Mucha was "a Czech from Moravia not only by birth and origin, but also by feeling, by conviction and by patriotism.

The temporary building built for the Exposition had three large halls with two levels, with a ceiling more than twelve meters high, and with natural light from skylights.

[35] Mucha's original concept was a group of murals depicting the suffering of the Slavic inhabitants of the region caused by the occupation by foreign powers.

He changed his project to depict a future society in the Balkans where Catholic and Orthodox Christians and Muslims lived in harmony together; this was accepted, and he began work.

His decoration included one large allegorical painting, Bosnia Offers Her Products to the Universal Exposition, and an additional set of murals on three walls, showing the history and cultural development of the region.

His 1902 book Documents Decoratifs contained plates of elaborate designs for brooches and other pieces, with swirling arabesques and vegetal forms, and incrustations of enamel and colored stones.

[39] The Cascade pendant designed for Fouquet by Mucha (1900) is in the form of a waterfall, composed of gold, enamel, opals, tiny diamonds, paillons, and a barocco or misshapen pearl.

[42] Mucha's next project was a series of seventy-two printed plates of watercolors of designs, titled Documents Decoratifs, which were published in 1902 by the Librarie Centrale des Beaux-arts.

Critic Charles Masson, who reviewed it for Art et Decoration, wrote: "There is in that man a visionary; it is the work of an imagination not suspected by those who only know his talent for the agreeable and charming.

It had become clear to me that that I would never have time to do the things I wanted to do if I did not get away from the treadmill of Paris, I would be constantly bound to publishers and their whims...in America, I don't expect to find wealth, comfort, or fame for myself, only the opportunity to do some more useful work.

He designed and created a series of large-scale murals for the domed ceiling and walls with athletic figures in heroic poses, depicting the contributions of Slavs to European history over the centuries, and the theme of Slavic unity.

[51] The Lord Mayor's Hall was finished in 1911, and Mucha was able to devote his attention to what he considered his most important work; The Slav Epic, a series of large paintings illustrating the achievements of the Slavic peoples over history.

The series had twenty paintings, half devoted to the history of the Czechs, and ten to other Slavic peoples (Russians, Poles, Serbs, Hungarians, Bulgarians, and the Balkans, including the Orthodox monasteries of Mount Athos.

[51] While living in Paris Mucha had imagined the series as "light shining into the souls of all people with its clear ideals and burning warnings."

Though public gatherings were banned, a huge crowd attended his interment in the Slavín Monument of Vyšehrad cemetery, reserved for notable figures in Czech culture.