Word: mucha
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Czechoslovakia there has just been completed The Epic of Slavic History, a series of 20 paintings so enormous that Alfons Mucha, the artist, has been as busy with stepladders as with lexicons. For more than 18 years the work has been under way. The subjects range from earliest Slavic history to allegorical, exuberant prophecy. Sages, religious leaders, rulers appear in glorious pageantry. The most magnificent picture of the series, a canvas as large as the façade of a sizeable barn, depicts the liberation of Russian serfs by Tsar Alexander II in 1861. In a grey, snowy twilight...
With the passing years the Slavs solidified in little communistic groups. Perhaps they were not naturally belligerent (not one of Mucha's paintings commemorates a deed of battle), but onslaughts of domineering Goths, the scorbutic spread of Huns under black-hearted Attila, compelled warfare. The Slavs multiplied, mi grated. Westward they journeyed to Poland, Northern Germany. Eastward they thronged Russia, pierced in slim wedges to the Pacific. Southward they trekked to Hungary, Albania, Greece. By the sth century A.D. they had ceased to be a nation, were even losing race consciousness. Gradually the widespread Slavic peoples adopted Christianity...
When Robin Hood rapped a wealthy miser on the pate with his quarter-staff and removed his pouch, he usually gave the money, or a large share of it, to the poor. It is much the same beneficient, kindly spirit which pervades the soul of the famous Polish bandit, Mucha. Nothing the dismal condition of his country's finances, he has made out an inventory of his year's "swag", and sent the list plus the income tax upon the amount to the government...
...certainly no more than just that these Croesusos should pay for the trade which the Volstead Act throws their way. But if they were less short sighted and would open their hearts to Mucha's benign example, tax collectors might be more leniently disposed and the public might cast a bland smile upon them. For everyone loves a cheerful public spirited giver, even though he rob Peter to pay Paul