In Quest of Beauty: Alphonse Mucha 1860-1939 featured a selection of over one hundred works, including paintings, lithographs, sculpture, jewellery, photographs, drawings and other artefacts intimately linked to Mucha, including his first ever poster produced for Sarah Bernhardt.
Guided by the artist’s own lecture notes, the exhibition explored how Mucha’s idea of beauty influenced his work. Mucha believed that beauty was the essence of art and was achieved by striking a balance between the internal, spiritual world and the external, material world. This principle informed his entire oeuvre, from his Art Nouveau posters and commercial works to his later works on the history of the Czech and Slavonic people.