Tuesday
12th November
The
Mucha Museum
With an
awareness of the aesthetic of the work of Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939),
I had never really appreciated it fully, until I saw it at The Mucha Museum in
Prague. The work seen at scale is truly breathtaking, he was a struggling Czech
born artist living in Paris, he then achieved overnight success when in 1894,
he accepted a commission to create a poster for one of the greatest actresses
of this time, Sarah Bernhardt. The public response was very strong and Art
Nouveau was born. The success of that first poster brought a 6 years working
relationship between Sarah Bernhardt and Mucha and in the following years his
work for her and others extended to include costumes, stage decorations,
designs for magazines, book covers, jewellery, furniture and more
posters.
His work is
united by the subtle yet bold colour palette, organic motifs from nature, such
flowers, flowing hair and ornate frames. The balance between flat areas of
colour, contrasted by areas of highly detailed forms really captivated me. The
most striking thing to see was some of the original artwork, pencil sketches of
leaves and berries from observation, photographs from his studio of the model
posed, where you could see the frame that he used in his posters was taken from
a mirror and pastel drawings on coloured paper. His influence is still very
strong in contemporary illustration.
Eleven
Illustration students, interested in figurative, feminine and delicate work.,
attended a 3 hour water-colour workshop hosted by fashion illustrator, Irina Kaygorodova. We met at Irina’s
basement studio near the river. She welcomed us and we sat around a small table
and told us about her work and career. Irina is Russian born and loved to draw
as a child. She studied art at University of Omsk.
Irina then
worked in publishing, which included work as the Senior Designer for a fashion
magazine. She later moved to Prague, where she has a studio and draws daily.
She is inspired by fashion and lifestyle - creating patterns for fashion
fabrics (in collaboration with a designer) jewellery, food, historical
buildings and calligraphy. Her main focus though is the figure and beautiful
fashion illustrations reminiscent of the 1950’s era.
Irina then
did a demonstration for us, using reference from a fashion magazine. She used
beautiful brushes and explained how she likes to create a certain ambiance
before starting to paint. She let the brush, water-colour and water dance over
the page with grace and feeling. You could not hear a pin drop whilst she was
working, the students were mesmerised. You could see how quickly she reacted to
the unpredictability of the water on paper, made decisions intuitively and knew
precisely when to stop and the drawing was finished.
She then
provided the students with reference pictures and water-colour paper to let
them do their own fashion illustrations. The atmosphere was quite tense, as everyone
wanted to do a good job for Irina. Irina gave advice to individuals as the
grappled with aspects of proportion (use the end of the brush to measure),
colour mixing, the right consistency of water, the details such as eyes or
mouth, which really give the painting life. The group made about 3 / 4 drawings
each. This was a unique experience to have tuition from Irina, the really
enjoyed talking their time over making work and the studio offered a tranquil
environment to do so. Photographs of the workshop to follow.
Thursday 14th
November
Terry's
Posters
We were
treated to an absolute gem of a visit, arranged for us by Lucy and Rad, we
visited the Terry’s Posters
Shop and the Svetozor art cinema. We were given a tour of the
archive, which was an Aladdin’s cave of the most striking posters. As with our
love of Polish and Cuban posters, we were eager to see some Czech posters in
the flesh. Many of these were originals that the owner Jan is trying hard to
archive and scan. There is a brilliant collection also available online 10 000
graphic posters from the Terry Posters‘ collection from Czechoslovakia in the
period of 1930 – 1989.
A lecture was then given to
the group explaining that during the Communist era film-making did thrive,
although it was regulated. There were some reasonable films made but people
craved things that were western. However, there was one interesting
difference, the movies did not come with their original posters. The Czech
distributors could make their own. They did not have to adhere to the strict
guidelines of Hollywood, showing a scene, the famous actors / actresses,
instead they had an open door to work with motifs, symbols and strong
metaphors. They were all made by hand and are truly wonderful pieces of graphic
design. We were shown a historical timeline of Czech film posters and then
visual comparisons were made of the Hollywood film posters next to the Czech
version.
