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90
VI SLET VSESOKOLSKY & LIDE CESKY! 1912.
V. Neubert, Smichov.
66x32 inches.
- Notes: Mucha created very few commercial advertisements after his resturn to Czechoslovakia but still did posters for patriotic events and causes. Interestingly from this time on he mainly uses children in his graphic work as opposed to the recognizable, extravagantly rendered Art Nouveau women who inhabited his early posters. This poster was for the 6th Sokol rally, held in Prague by the Czech and other Slavic Sokol organizations. The Sokol movement was founded in 1862 (in what is now the Czech Republic) on the principles that physical fitness was an important part of a persons well-being. Sokol members would gather every four years at massive Slets (assemblies) to perform physical drills and gymnastics to which the public was always invited. Not only important for exercise, the Sokol movement was also a hot bed for nationalist development. Like most of Mucha's Czech posters this one, too, is loaded with symbolism: The young girl is wearing a crown reminiscent of the ramparts of old Slavic fortifications, to remind people that despite the seeming youth of the Slavic national movements, their purpose is deeply rooted in history. The combinations of red and light colors used on the girl's cloak symbolize the Slavic colors, as well as the colors of the Czech national flag. "Her arm is encircled with a garland woven from the leaves of the symbolic Czech linden tree" (Spirit p. 36) These garlands represent the Slavic nations, which despite geographical and physical differences are forever united in their common struggle for national self determination. Behind her is mighty Slavia reaching out from the darkness of the past, holding a falcon (in Czech the word for falcon is Sokol) in one hand and a symbol of the undivided slavs being reunited in the other. Rare and spectacular. This is the previously unrecorded Yugoslavian version. Rennert/Weill 99, Mucha, A61, Spirit cover and p. 36.
- Condition: Condition B+: restored losses and repaired tears in margins; repaired tears along horizontal folds. Two-sheets.
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December 18, 2003 12:00 AM EST
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