☛ Mucha Foundation: “Job” (poster) by Alphonse Mucha, colour lithograph, 149.2 x 101, 1898 (©)
Mucha made two advertising posters for Job cigarette papers, both of which feature a woman holding a cigarette whose smoke winds round her head. In both posters Mucha places the central female figure against a background featuring Job monograms. Both posters are notable for the arabesques formed by the curves and swirls of the woman’s exaggeratedly abundant hair, a feature which was much commented on and copied at the time and which was satirized by contemporary wits as “Mucha’s macaroni”.
More about Alphonse Mucha:
Alphonse (Alfons) Mucha (1860-1939) was a prolific Moravian painter of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries and a key figure in the Art Nouveau movement. His style of painting influenced an entire generation of painters, graphic artists, draughtsmen and designers and in the minds of many, his work epitomizes the Art Nouveau. He himself came to resent his fame as an artist of the utilitarian, believing that true art should be elevated and epic. (Olga’s Gallery)
