künstler/in: Alfons Muchatitel: Slawisches Epos: Die Slawen in ihrer ursprünglichen Heimat. Svantovít-Feier. Einführung der Slavonischen Liturgie in Gross Moravien. Kaiser Simeon I von Bulgarien. König Přemysl Otakar II von Böhmen. Die Krönung des serbischen Kaisers Štěpán Dušan. Milíč von Kroměříž. Meister Jan Hus predigt in der Bethlehem-Kapelle: Die Herrschaft der Wahrheit. Das Treffen von Křížky. Nach der Schlacht von Grunewald. Nach der Schlacht von Vítkov. Petr von Chelčice. Der hussitische König Jiří z Podĕbrad. Die Verteidigung von Sziget durch Nikola Zrinski. Der Druck der Bibel von Kralice in Ivančice. Jan Amos Komenský. Der heilige Berg Athos. Der Eid von Omlandina unter der slavischen Linde. Die Abschaffung der Leibeigenschaft in Russland. Die Apotheose der Slawen. Slawen für die Menschheitjahr: 1911–28adresse: Prager Messepalast, Dukelskych hrdinu 47, Prag, Tschechien

kommentar:

• Slav Epic by Alphonse Mucha, in: Golan 2009, p. 3 (dieser beitrag wurde verfasst in: englisch)

  It is in the European capitals eager to compete from the 'periphery' that one finds the strongest push, about 1900, to produce mural works. Most spectacular were those by the Czech artist Alphonse Mucha for his immense twenty-panel Slav Epic (1910—28) for Prague's city hall, Edvard Munch's paintings (the two main one are entitled History and Toward the Light) for the aula of the University of Oslo, a space that doubles as the city's main concert hall (commissioned in 1910, the same year as Mucha's series); and Ferdinand Hodler's fresco The Return of the Swiss Mercenaries from the Battle of Marignan for the Salle d'Armes of the Zurich National Museum (painted in 1900). Most of these were, again, not real murals and the contraptions devised by Mucha are certainly revealing in this respect. His canvases — seven of which measure 6.1 meters high by 8.1 meters long — were so big that he had difficulty keeping them taut. Instead of using the usual wooden stretchers, Mucha adapted the technique used for theater decorations and designed perforated tubular metal frames to which the canvases could be laced through metal eyelets. The frames were on wheels and could be easily moved around or stored. Nevertheless, in all these works, the artists downplayed their penchant for the sinuous line and the curvilinear form, elliptical imagery, and, in case of Munch, psychological inwardness, for which they were known as major proponents of Symbolism. As a result, these works still fell in line with a stable, century-old tradition of public monumental mural art.