8 October - 28 March 2026
A major retrospective devoted to Alphonse Mucha, master of Art Nouveau and a key figure of the Belle Époque. The exhibition brings together over 150 works, including posters, paintings, illustrations, and applied arts, revealing the breadth of an artist who was able to transform the graphic language into art and bring beauty into everyday life.
Palazzo Bonaparte – Piazza Venezia, 5
The exhibition stands as one of the most anticipated events of the international exhibition season. It offers the public an itinerary through the creative universe of the Czech artist (1860, Ivančice, Moravia – 1939, Prague, Czech Republic), regarded as the most recognisable face of Art Nouveau and as an innovator who succeeded in weaving together aesthetics, spirituality, and social engagement.
The exhibition route embraces his entire career: from the famous theatre posters created in Paris for Sarah Bernhardt, to the allegorical cycles; from designs for jewellery and decorative arts to the monumental paintings of the Slav Epic. The exhibition restores the complexity of Mucha, not only as a refined illustrator, but as an artist capable of translating a universal ideal of beauty and harmony into images. For visitors, it is a journey that allows them to encounter an iconic figure while also discovering lesser-known dimensions of his research.
Alphonse Mucha was born in Ivančice, Moravia, in 1860. From a very young age he showed a strong inclination for drawing and music, a talent that led him to study in Brno and later in Vienna, where he came into contact with the world of theatre, working as a set decorator. After a period in Munich, he moved to Paris in 1887 (to the Montmartre district), where he met numerous artists (including Gauguin). At that time, the city was the world capital of the arts. There he enrolled at the Académie Julian and the Académie Colarossi, frequenting cosmopolitan and innovative circles.
Paris was then experiencing the full splendour of the Belle Époque: a period of social transformation, intellectual ferment, and major artistic experimentation. Impressionism, Symbolism, and the emerging field of advertising graphics coexisted in a varied landscape open to hybridisation between the so-called major arts and the applied arts. In this context, Mucha distinguished himself through a personal style that combined the fluid linearity of medieval and Byzantine ornament with a refined chromatic and symbolic sensibility.
Success came almost by chance: in December 1894, the French actress Sarah Bernhardt needed a poster for the play Gismonda, a theatrical work by Victorien Sardou. Mucha created an image that caused a sensation due to its vertical format, delicate tones, and the elongated figure of the actress wrapped in ornamental motifs. That poster was not merely advertising: it was a work of art in its own right. Bernhardt was so impressed that she signed a six-year collaboration contract with him. From that moment on, Mucha became a leading figure on the Parisian scene, and his posters were torn from the walls to be collected.
Mucha’s art is distinguished by several constant features: the use of a fluid, almost musical line that defines figures and decorations; the centrality of the female figure, often transfigured into allegory; the richness of ornamental motifs inspired by nature, with flowers, tendrils, stars, and arabesques; and a luminous chromatic palette, with pastel tones that convey harmony and lightness. To these elements is added a strong symbolic component, drawing on Slavic mysticism and the folk traditions of his homeland.
The female figure is the core iconographic element in Mucha’s art. These are not simple portraits, but allegorical incarnations: the seasons, the arts, virtues, and even abstract concepts such as hope or music take shape in idealised women, with delicate faces and solemn gestures. These images, suspended between sensuality and spirituality, became visual models capable of encapsulating the aesthetic ideal of Art Nouveau.
Before Mucha, the poster was considered an ephemeral medium of commercial communication. With him it became collectible art. His works transformed the urban space into an open-air gallery, helping to disseminate a shared aesthetic that reached a broad public. Through graphic design, art stepped out of the elitist confines of museums to become part of everyday experience.
Art Nouveau emerged as a reaction against nineteenth-century eclecticism and academicism, proposing a unified language based on the sinuous line and on the integration of the arts. In architecture, painting, sculpture, design, and the decorative arts, an ideal of organic beauty, inspired by nature and its rhythms, took shape. Although recognised as the symbolic face of this movement, Mucha occupied a distinctive position: alongside decoration, he developed a spiritual and utopian dimension that sets him apart from other leading figures of the period.
In Italy, Art Nouveau took the name Stile Liberty, with figures such as Galileo Chini and Duilio Cambellotti. Though their visual languages differed, an interesting parallel emerges: like Mucha, Italian artists sought to unite the so-called major and minor arts, promoting a widespread aesthetic that involved furniture, graphic art, and the applied arts. This comparison helps to clarify Mucha’s importance in the European context: he was not merely an illustrator, but the creator of a cross-disciplinary language that influenced multiple creative fields.
Mucha never conceived his art as a mere stylistic exercise. Even in his most decorative posters, one senses the desire to create images with a universal value, capable of speaking to everyone. This explains his subsequent development towards monumental projects such as the Slav Epic, in which art becomes a vehicle for historical consciousness and political aspiration. For Mucha, Art Nouveau was therefore a point of departure, not a point of arrival.
Whereas other Art Nouveau artists tended to privilege the ornamental dimension, Mucha sought to go further: for him, decoration was the language through which to express spirituality, identity, and harmony. In this sense, his art stands as a bridge between the aesthetic and the ideal spheres, offering a message that retains its full force even today.
The exhibition does not merely display works: it invites visitors to cross a threshold, to step into the beating heart of Mucha’s universe. With over one hundred and fifty creations, it feels like wandering through a garden of images in which every poster, every study, every vision becomes a doorway leading elsewhere.
Here stands Gismonda, rising like a theatrical hymn from 1894; Médée (1898), burning with her tragic fire; JOB (1896), swaying among coils of smoke and seduction.
And then the feminine constellations of The Stars (1902), celestial beings shimmering like ancient spirits, beside the chromatic nobility of the Precious Stones (1900), where woman becomes gem, natural element, luminous myth.
The exhibition is structured as a true thematic retrospective that accompanies visitors from the Parisian origins of his success to the years of utopian and political engagement. Numerous works punctuate the itinerary, organised into sections that reveal the versatility of a creator who was able to move from posters to painting, from the decorative arts to design. The carefully designed display recreates the atmosphere of the Belle Époque, while also conveying the spiritual and monumental dimension of Mucha, with spaces devoted to his most ambitious projects.
The exhibition route opens with the section that made Mucha famous throughout Europe: his theatre posters. Beginning with the celebrated Gismonda (1894), his works for Sarah Bernhardt captivated Paris and established a new aesthetic standard. The elongated figures, the ornamental motifs, the decorative halos around the actresses’ heads, the refined colours: everything contributed to transforming an advertising image into a cultural icon. Equally important were commissions from renowned companies such as Nestlé, Moët & Chandon, JOB, Ruinart, Perfecta, and Waverley, all of which made use of Mucha’s advertising posters.
With Mucha’s posters, the city itself became a vast open-air gallery. Strolling along the Parisian boulevards, citizens encountered images that went beyond their commercial function to become works of art. It is therefore unsurprising that many of these posters were removed from the walls and collected, bearing witness to a phenomenon without precedent. In this way, art spread beyond the confines of museums, entering directly into everyday life.
The second section of the exhibition is devoted to allegories, one of the most characteristic themes in Mucha’s production. Cycles such as The Seasons,The Times of Day, andThe Arts are exemplary of a visual language in which the female figure becomes the embodiment of universal concepts. The women depicted are not concrete individuals, but living symbols, immersed in natural settings adorned with flowers, stars, and geometric motifs.
These allegories reveal Mucha’s desire to go beyond the purely aesthetic dimension. Decoration becomes a symbolic language, capable of conveying spiritual and moral values. The Seasons, for instance, are not merely depictions of the natural cycle, but meditations on time, life, and beauty. Decorative art is elevated to a vehicle for universal reflection.
The exhibition devotes considerable space to Mucha’s contribution to the applied arts. Collaborations with jewellers, goldsmiths, ceramicists, and furniture manufacturers testify to his aspiration to make art an integral part of everyday life. Designs for jewellery, stained glass, and furnishings reveal a talent capable of uniting refined aesthetics with functionality.
For Mucha, there was no rigid separation between high art and the so-called minor arts: everything could be transformed by beauty. Here one can discern the influence of the British Arts and Crafts movement, but also the originality of an approach that emphasised the educational and ethical value of aesthetics. His jewellery, for example, was not mere ornament, but a bearer of cultural and spiritual meaning.
In the background are the monumental studies for the Slav Epic, roots and memory transformed into pictorial immensity. A central section of the exhibition is dedicated to Mucha the painter, too often overshadowed by the fame of his posters. The most ambitious work is the Slav Epic, a cycle of twenty monumental canvases, created between 1910 and 1928. In these works, the artist celebrated the history and identity of the Slavic peoples, giving life to a project that combined aesthetics and politics.
The Slav Epic was not merely an act of national pride: it was the realisation of an idea of universal art, capable of uniting peoples through beauty and historical memory. Funded by the American patron Charles Richard Crane, the work was conceived as a gift to the Czech nation, yet it possessed a broader scope: it aspired to strengthen spiritual bonds among peoples and to propose an ideal of fraternity.
The retrospective also includes lesser-known but valuable sections: preparatory drawings, graphic sketches, photographs taken by the artist, and illustrations for books and journals. These materials reveal Mucha’s working methodology, his attention to detail, and his versatility. He emerges not as an artist confined to a single medium, but as a creative figure who moved with ease across different disciplines.
Mucha regarded art as a tool for moral and cultural elevation. His decorative works, refined as they are, were never intended to serve a purely aesthetic function: they sought to educate, inspire, and convey universal values. For him, beauty was a language capable of speaking to everyone, regardless of social or cultural background. This conception led him to embark on monumental projects and to view the artist as a spiritual guide for society.
Mucha’s impact can still be felt today. His sinuous lines, allegorical female figures, and ornamental motifs have become visual archetypes that continue to inspire contemporary graphic design, fashion, and even popular culture. Far from being an artist confined to a single historical moment, Mucha stands as a forerunner of modern visual culture.
Mucha’s posters were rediscovered in the 1960s and 1970s by the psychedelic movement, which reinterpreted his fluid forms and vibrant colours. Even today, his images appear on album covers, fashion collections, and digital illustrations. His enduring influence attests to art’s capacity to traverse eras and to be constantly renewed.
The retrospective offers a comprehensive view of Mucha, presenting not only his best-known graphic masterpieces but also lesser-known works, preparatory drawings, paintings, and decorative projects. It is a rare opportunity to discover the complexity of an artist too often reduced to an icon of Art Nouveau, yet in reality the bearer of a far broader and deeper vision. The exhibition will also feature a guest of honour from the Royal Museums of Turin, Sandro Botticelli’s Venus, a universal personification of eternal beauty, alongside works by Giovanni Boldini, Cesare Saccaggi, Renaissance pieces, and Art Nouveau furnishings and objects.
Visiting the exhibition means immersing oneself in an aesthetic universe of extraordinary beauty, while also reflecting on the role of art in society. The harmony of forms, the symbolic power of allegories, and the utopian ambition of the Slav Epic invite the public to reflect on the relationship between art, spirituality, and community.
Mucha’s works, conceived for public spaces and wide audiences, still retain this collective dimension. The exhibition restores the full impact of images which, though created more than a century ago, continue to speak with freshness and intensity. It is an opportunity to understand how art can contribute to building identity and a sense of belonging.
In an age of fleeting images and rapid communication, Mucha represents an example of how art can unite aesthetic rigour and a universal message. His lesson remains current: to create beauty not for the few, but for everyone; to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary; to make art a vehicle for dialogue and growth. More than sufficient reasons not to miss this retrospective.
Under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture, the Lazio Region, the Municipality of Rome – Department of Culture, the Embassy of the Czech Republic, and the Czech Centre at the Embassy of the Czech Republic, the exhibition is produced and organised by Arthemisia, in collaboration with the Mucha Foundation and the Royal Museums of Turin. The curators are Elizabeth Brooke and Annamaria Bava, with scientific direction by Francesca Villanti.
Curated by Eleonora Luongo
The exhibition itinerary is designed to guide students in discovering the artist’s language and style, developing their ability to observe, understand, and interpret the works within their historical and cultural context. Through age-appropriate methodologies and forms of communication, participants are led through an active experience that brings together curiosity, knowledge, and creativity.
For nursery and primary schools, the visit takes the form of a visual story about the artist and his way of transforming reality into image. For secondary schools, the focus shifts to the analysis of style, techniques, and cultural influences. For adults and groups, the itinerary offers a critical reading of the work and of the historical-artistic context in which it is situated. At the end of the visit, a supplementary dossier is provided to extend and deepen the educational experience.
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