known in English as Alphonse Mucha, was a Czech Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist, known best for his distinct style. He produced many paintings, illustrations, advertisements, postcards, and designs. Alphonse Maria Mucha was born in the town of Ivančice, Moravia (the present Czech Republic). Although his singing abilities allowed him to continue his education through high school in the Moravian capital of Brno, drawing had been his main hobby since childhood. He worked at decorative painting jobs in Moravia, mostly painting theatrical scenery. During 1879, he relocated to Vienna to work for a major Viennese theatrical design company, while informally augmenting his artistic education. When a fire destroyed his employer's business during 1881 he returned to Moravia, to do freelance decorative and portrait painting. Count Karl Khuen of Mikulov hired Mucha to decorate Hrušovany Emmahof Castle with murals, and was impressed enough that he agreed to sponsor Mucha's formal training at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts.   Related Paintings of Alfons Mucha :. | The Morning Star of Slavonic Literature | Woman With a Burning Candle | The Celebration of Svantovit: When Gods Are at War, Salvation is in the Art | The Union of Slavic Dynasties | The Red Cape |
Related Artists:
Hans Burgkmair
(1473 - 1531) was a German painter and printmaker in woodcut. Burgkmair was born in Augsburg, the son of painter Thomas Burgkmair and his son, Hans the Younger, became one too. From 1488 he was a pupil of Martin Schongauer in Colmar, who died during his two years there, before Burgkmair completed the normal period of training. He may have visited Italy at this time, and certainly did so in 1507, which greatly influenced his style. From 1491 he was working in Augsburg, where he became a master and opened his own workshop in 1498. Hollstein ascribes 834 woodcuts to him, mostly for book illustrations, with slightly over a hundred being "single-leaf", that is prints not for books. The best of them show a talent for striking compositions, and a blend, not always fully successful, of Italian Renaissance forms and underlying German style. From about 1508 he spent much of his time working on the woodcut projects of Maximilian I until the Emperor's death in 1519. He was responsible for nearly half of the 135 prints in the Trumphs of Maximilian, which are large and full of character. He also did most of the illustrations for Weiss Kunig and much of Theurdank. He was an important innovator of the chiaroscuro woodcut, and seems to have been the first to use a tone block, in a print of 1508.His Lovers Surprised by Death (1510) is the first chiaroscuro print to use three blocks.and also the first print that was designed to be printed only in colour, as the line block by itself would not make a satisfactory image. Other chiaroscuro prints from around this date by Baldung and Cranach had line blocks that could be and were printed by themselves.He produced one etching, Venus and Mercury (c1520),etched on a steel plate, but never tried engraving, despite his training with Schongauer.
WITZ, Konrad
b. cca 1400, Rottweil, d. ca. 1445, Basel. German-born painter from Rottweil in Swabia, active in Switzerland. German painter. One of the great innovators in northern European painting, he turned away from the lyricism of the preceding generation of German painters. His sturdy, monumental figures give a strong impression of their physical presence, gestures are dignified and the colours strong and simple. Even scenes with several figures are strangely undramatic and static. The surface appearance of materials, especially metals and stone, is intensely observed and recorded with an almost naive precision. Powerful cast shadows help to define the spatial relationships between objects. His fresh approach to the natural world reflects that of the Netherlandish painters: the Master of Fl?malle and the van Eycks. He need not, however, have trained in the Netherlands or in Burgundy as knowledge of their style could have been gained in Basle. He remained, however, untouched by the anecdotal quality present in their art,
Moses, Grandma
1948 Oil on pressed wood.