Le Pater, Compositions par Alphonse Mucha

Facsimile. Exceptional edition of 200 numbered and certified copies. Box containing the facsimile and an accompanying book.

Of Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939), the Czech artist exiled in Paris after training in Prague and Vienna, we know especially the advertising posters, emblematic works of Art Nouveau. But this prolific and complex artist, at once painter, draftsman, sculptor and photographer could not be reduced to this label.

The Pater is the first work of the philosopher Mucha. It was published in Paris on December 20, 1899, just before the turn of the century. In the form of a book that illustrates the prayer Our Father, Mucha inscribes in it a message for future generations. He develops a humanistic thought by describing the progression of humanity from the darkness of ignorance to the higher states of spirituality and truth. The prayer is divided into seven sentences, each of which is reproduced, then commented on and finally illustrated by the artist.
In a luxurious box, an accompanying book is to be unveiled under this editorial masterpiece. It begins with an essay by Tomoko Sato, contextualizing the work and providing a detailed analysis of its importance in Mucha's career. Jacob Sadilek then offers a reading of it from a Freemasonic point of view. To conclude the reflection, Otto Urban analyzes the development of Mucha's spiritualism in the Paris of the 1890s, and more broadly the development of nationalism and symbolism in Czech art. A symbolic glossary accompanying the leaflet of the Pater closes the book.

About the authors (accompanying booklet)

Tomoko Sato is curator of the Mucha Foundation. She has organized numerous exhibitions on Alphonse Mucha around the world (including the one at the Musée du Luxembourg in 2018), as well as on design and photography.

Jacob Sadilek is a Czech researcher specializing in freemasonry.

Otto Urban heads the Department of Art History and Theory at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. He is the editor of The Mysterious Far Away. Symbolism in the Countries of the Czech Crown 1880-1914, published in Prague by Arbor vitae in 2014, on the symbolism of Czech artists of the late nineteenth century.

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• Box
  Finished size 410 x 510 mm
  Full canvas + hot stamping laminated on cardboard 30/10th Inside 2 levels of wedge to receive a work
  Four-color printing R° on white wibalin 125 g laminated on cardboard
  To be defined with notch and bookmark

• Facsimile
  Brochure
  Format 310 x 410 mm
  Cover with flaps black + gold silkscreen printing on mass tinted paper 300 g
  Inside 60 pages four-color printing + gold screen printing
  On old mill stucco 200 or 250 g (depending on sewing possibility)
  Sewn square back

• Accompanying book
  Half binder
  Finished size 195 x 310 mm
  Coating
  Full color printing + 1 tone + protective varnish on white Wibalin 125 g
  Canvas back (to be defined)
  Keeps four-color printing R°V° on white offset 140 g
  Inside 128 pages four-color printing R°V° on munken print cream 115 g
  60 illustrations

• Material at disposal: Paper and digital blade, sample of paper, interview with the Mucha Foundation, film on the making of the book, possibility of booking at the number