Here we are in the Walker Art Gallery's
Alphonse Mucha: In Quest of Beauty exhibition
and I'm talking to John Mucha who is
grandson of Alphonse
So John, tell us a little bit about
what it was like growing up with the influence
of your grandfather in the family
Well originally it was actually just trying to survive
because I lived in communist Czechoslovakia
and what people have to realise is that
in the 1950's when I was a kid, and early 60's
the official view of Mucha was that he was
decadent, bourgeoisie and of no value
apart from that, in the early 1950's
my father, falsely accused of espionage,
was in jail, so things were not easy
but the family managed to keep everything together
which was a miracle
and so it was always sort of in the background but
in terms of how people percieve Mucha today
that didn't really exist.
It was only in the 1960's when,
in fact through England,
there was a man called Brian Reed and he
worked for the Victoria and Albert museum and it
was the beginning of flower power and
art nouveau was coming back
and Brian Reed knew my father during WWII,
my father was involved in battle of Britain,
so he got in touch with my dad and
it is in the early 1960's that suddenly
there is this extraordinary exhibition at
the Victoria and Albert museum
which suddenly relaunched Mucha.
I was a teenager then and of course
particularly with Liverpool and The Beatles and everything else
so it started having more impact on the family
and there's also the time when my father
was finally able to organise exhibitons
in Japan and across Europe and so
the knowledge of Mucha and his fame
started spreading again.
but as a kid basically,
you just grew up in a house with lots of things
lots of dusting, lots of tidying up
it was just an ordinary life really
- did you see much of his work growing up?
The house where we live in Prague
he didn't actually live there
what happened was that in 1950
the family villa was confiscated by the communists
we were thrown out but managed to find accomodation
which is in a wonderful house, it doesn't belong to us
it belongs to the church
but we've been there ever since, since 1950
and in the house my parents tried to
sort of
give a hint of Mucha's atelier in Val-de-Grâce
so I've been surrounded by the works
all my life
and indeed the house we tried to make it as
accessible as we can
we've had people like the Prince of Wales,
Salman Rushdie
but it's not just for the great people
it's also for students
people who are genuinely interested
and we now also have the museum
since I established the foundation 25 years ago
to try and protect the whole thing
and make it available, which is one of
the reasons why we are here today
to make it available to the people of Liverpool
- and it looks amazing, it looks really
wonderful in the space so I'd
encourage everybody to come along and see it