Le Pater. Le Grand Œuvre d'Alphonse Mucha

Le Pater is the first work by the philosopher Mucha. It was published in Paris on 20 December 1899, just before the turn of the century.
In the form of a book illustrating the Our Father prayer, Mucha wrote a message for future generations. He developed humanist thinking by describing humanity’s progression 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, commented on and illustrated by the artist.

The plates in the book, scanned from the original copy held by the Mucha Foundation, are reproduced here in their entirety in exceptional quality. In the introduction, several texts by specialists help us to understand Le Pater as a whole and to grasp the issues involved. Tomoko Sato’s essay begins with a contextualisation of the work and a detailed analysis of its importance in Mucha’s career. Jacob Sadilek then offers a reading of the work from a Freemasonic point of view. To conclude, Otto Urban analyses the development of Mucha’s spiritualism in the Paris of the 1890s, and more broadly that of nationalism and symbolism in Czech art. A symbolic glossary accompanies the leafing through of the Pater, enabling today’s readers to decipher the secrets of this work.