Exceptional exhibition, the first of its kind, opens for the public on 9th December 2018 in the Dačický House.
The Czech Art Nouveau painter Alfons Mucha became famous thanks to his series of large canvass paintings rendering important events in the history of the Czechs and Slaves, The Slav Epic. It is not however generally known that Alfons Mucha was a co-founder of the first Czech speaking lodge of freemasons, “Jan Amos Komenský“. He was regarded as the highest representative of the Czechoslovak freemasons of the First Republic.
As an artist, Alfons Mucha greatly contributed to artistic rendering of various artefacts of the Czechoslovak freemasonry. He was the author of graphic sheets, headers of freemason's letter papers; Mucha's designs of freemason's jewels are very popular worldwide too.
Also the style of apron decoration is particular for Mucha; the same applies to the freemason's hammer and the box for depositing the Book of Laws. For the Freemason's Temple in Prague, A. Mucha created a picture of a mason called The Last Work. The signs of Freemasonry also appear in other works of this exceptional man, but they are forgotten, including freemason's cut chalices.
It is the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the first Czech Lodge of Freemasons that was an incentive for the realization of this exhibition. Masons regarded the lodges as a means of building a free and democratic republic. The exhibition will reveal the secrets of freemasons and, at the same time, show the unknown aspects of Alfons Mucha's life.
