Painter. He received professional recognition as a Czech painter and decorative artist, who was the most defining artist of the Art Nouveau style. When he was young, he worked at what decorative painting jobs he could in Brno, mostly painting theatrical scenery. Born Alfons Maria Mucha, he was known internationally as Alphonse Mucha. In 1879 he moved to Vienna to work for a leading Viennese theatrical design company. After relocating to Germany, he received formal training at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. In 1887 he moved to Paris, continuing his studies at the Académie Julian and Academie Colarossi while producing magazine and advertising illustrations part-time. In 1894 he was hired to produce the artwork for a lithographed poster advertising Sarah Bernhardt at the Theatre de la Renaissance; in this poster she was portrayed as the Greek goddess, Gismonda. Mucha's lush stylized illustration won him fame and numerous commissions and a six-year contract with Bernhardt. In his distinct style, he produced a flurry of paintings, posters, and advertisements in what came to be known as the Art Nouveau Style. His art frequently featured beautiful young women with flowing hair wearing sheer Neoclassical looking robes, often surrounded by lush flowers, forming haloes behind the women's heads. His style soon came to be much imitated, though seldom so beautifully and artistically as the work of Mucha himself. For his Art Nouveau Style exhibitions at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900, he earned the title of Knight of the Order of Franz Joseph I from the Austrian government and the Legion of Honor from the French Government. From 1904 to 1910, he made six trips to the United States, teaching illustration and design at the New York School of Applied Design for Women, at the Philadelphia School of Art for five weeks, and became a visiting professor at the Art Institute of Chicago, in addition to painting mural in theaters. His style of art could be seen in jewelry, carpets, wallpaper, and greeting cards. After returning to his homeland in Bohemia-Moravia part of the Austria-Hungarian Empire, he finally settled in Prague. He decorated the Theater of Fine Arts and other landmarks of the city. When Czechoslovakia became independent after World War I, he designed the new postage stamps, banknotes, and other government documents for the new nation. He spent years working on what he considered his masterpiece, "The Slav Epic," a series of huge paintings depicting the history of the Slavic peoples, which was unveiled in Prague in 1928.