Ivan Lendl’s collection of Mucha posters will return to Prague next week with a modern twist

Tennis player Ivan Lendl’s collection of posters by Alfons Mucha will return to Obecní dům, the same place where they attracted 185,000 visitors seven years ago. The iMucha exhibition starts August 21 and runs daily to February 10, 2023.

The show will be different this time. Some posters will be complemented by a digital representation that allows them to move.

Lendl’s collection is now owned by the Richard Fuxa Foundation – Nadační fond Richarda Fuxy, which promotes art.

“In addition to expanding the collection by about 70 original artifacts, we also used the most modern technologies in designing the exhibition, thanks to which the motifs of the more than 100-year-old work of Alfons Mucha literally come to life. However, there is much more that will amaze visitors, for example Alfons Mucha himself will speak to them,” fund chairman Richard Fuxa said. Fuxa made his career in advertising and also co-founded the DOX Center for Contemporary Art.

The exhibition will show models from posters in motion, an animated story from the Slav Epic, and the voice of Alfons Mucha coming from his self-portrait. The exhibition will cover 550 square meters with over 200 original works by Alfons Mucha, many more than a century old.

Another part of the iMucha project will be a multimedia show directed by musician Michal Dvořák at O2 Universum, on May 19, 2021. It was postponed due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

The multimedia show will feature projections, modern music, dance, acrobatics and an intriguing stage design. It will tell the life story of the painter, graphic artist, designer through the eyes of a young comic book artist. The concept is to show what the Mucha’s work would look like if he lived in the present.

The previous exhibition of this collection of Mucha’s posters in Prague became the most visited fine art show of 2013. The collection has since traveled around the world to Milan, Genoa, New York and Seoul, and has been seen by over half a million people.

The collection started by Lendl includes some rare posters that exist only in a single copy or just three copies.