Completed in 1928, Alphonse Mucha’s Slav Epic is a monumental series of 20 paintings depicting a mythologised Slavic history, with the largest canvases more than eight metres wide. Supported in creating the work by the US businessman and diplomat Charles Crane, Mucha gave the series to Prague, on condition that the city authorities built a dedicated exhibition space to house it.
Almost 100 years later, a permanent home for the paintings has yet to be created. Instead, the Slav Epic has spent much of its existence on display in Moravský Krumlov, close to Brno in southern Moravia. Having previously been shown there between 1963 and 2011, the Epic’s current five-year loan to the town’s restored castle began in 2021.
Although Mucha’s grandson and great-grandson, John and Marcus Mucha, have longstanding plans with the property developer Crestyl to bring the Epic to the latter’s Savarin development in the centre of the Czech capital, the city of Prague has yet to fully commit to the project and is understood to be considering a number of different options regarding a long-term home.
While that process continues, Prague’s city council in August approved the extension of the Epic’s loan to Moravský Krumlov for an additional five years, until 2031.
Ambitious plans
Plans to house the Epic inside the Savarin development, in a vaulted underground space designed by the British designer Thomas Heatherwick, were first announced in 2021. As part of the arrangement, Crestyl offered to cover all costs required for the construction of the exhibition space, with Prague bearing no initial costs.
John Mucha said at the time that the city’s agreement to the plans would enable him to end legal action he had initiated in 2016, which asserted that the city could no longer be considered the Epic’s legal owner, on the basis that it had not fulfilled the condition to provide it with a permanent home.
Together with his mother, Geraldine Mucha, in 1992 John established the Mucha Foundation, which is now led by his son, Marcus. The foundation works in partnership with the Mucha Trust, which is the owner of the Mucha family collection.
The first of the 20 paintings in the Slav Epic series
Courtesy the Mucha Foundation
While a 2026 completion date had previously been targeted, construction work on the newer elements of the Savarin development, including the space intended for the Epic, has not yet begun, as the project has been waiting to be granted full planning permission.
After progressing through the permit process for several years, Crestyl announced this summer that it had finally received a valid zoning decision, which the company views as a key milestone to completing the project. Crestyl must now wait to be granted a building permit before construction can begin.
In a statement released by Crestyl on 12 August, the company’s chief executive officer, Simon Johnson, said, “We anticipate that we will be able to start construction next year and complete the project and open it to the public in 2029.”
The mixed-use development, which Crestyl envisages as “a new public space” for Prague, would expand across an extensive site behind the 18th-century Savarin Palace, with one of four entrances opening onto the city’s historic Wenceslas Square.
Renovation work has already been completed on the palace itself, which is home to a new museum, opened by the Mucha Foundation and Crestyl earlier this year.
The new museum is at present involved in a complex legal dispute with the nearby Panská Street-based Mucha museum, which opened in 1998. While the latter previously showed work from the Mucha family collection, it now exhibits a private collection, originally assembled by the Czech tennis player Ivan Lendl.
Mucha do about Alphonse
A further obstacle to moving the Epic to the Savarin development comes in the form of a court case brought by another member of the Mucha family, the artist’s granddaughter, Jarmila Mucha Plocková. Opposed to what she sees as an “unworthy” home for the Epic, Mucha Plocková filed a lawsuit in 2023 against both the city of Prague and her half-brother, John, on the basis that they had agreed on the Savarin plans without her consent or involvement.
Mucha Plocková says her lawsuit requests “that the court decide who the work belongs to. The family or the city?”
The legal action included an initial injunction that prevented the city from finalising the Savarin agreement, but the injunction was lifted on appeal in early 2024, allowing discussions between the city, Crestyl and the Mucha Foundation to continue.
At the time, one of Prague’s deputy mayors, Jiří Pospíšil, said in comments to the Czech press that the city would “restart negotiations and the search for a location for the Epic. Prague will negotiate with Crestyl, but at the same time it will look for alternatives … It has not yet been decided where the Epic will be located. In the end, there must be a long-term solution that is advantageous and agreed upon by Mucha’s family.”
In the meantime, Mucha Plocková’s lawsuit has continued to progress. A court hearing was held on 4 February this year, but the proceedings were paused to allow time for the three parties to reach an agreement. Mucha Plocková says she has since met with representatives of the city and that they are willing to consider alternative locations. However, she says that John and Marcus have been unwilling to negotiate with her and that the case is therefore expected to continue on 23 September as we went to press.
Regarding her objections to the Savarin site, Mucha Plocková argues, “If Alphonse Mucha had suspected that the Slav Epic might be placed underground in a shopping centre, he would certainly not have given the work to Prague.”
“I see the volume of exhibition space,” she continues, “planned more than 20 metres below ground level, in a historically protected location and with a high water table, as a gamble with the safety of a valuable cultural monument.”
Mucha Plocková and John Mucha are both considered Alphonse Mucha’s oldest living legal heirs, on the basis that their father, Jiri, was the artist’s son. John’s mother, Geraldine, was Jiri’s wife, while Mucha Plocková’s mother was Vlasta Plocková. Mucha Plocková was not fully recognised as a legal heir until 2007, several years after posthumous genetic analysis on a sample of Jiri’s blood confirmed his paternity.
Regarding the Epic’s proposed display, Crestyl’s spokesperson says that “the artworks will of course be completely safe” and that the “spaces and their security will be prepared in coordination with all interested parties, including the Prague City Gallery”, which acts as the official custodian of the Epic and is responsible for curating its exhibition.
There are plans to bring the Slav Epic to the Savarin development in Prague
© Crestyl
Responding to the current uncertainty over the Epic’s future, a Mucha Foundation spokesperson says: “As a family and as a foundation, it’s important to us that we honour our contractual commitments. It’s now almost a century since Alphonse presented the entire series as a gift to the City of Prague with the proviso the 20 canvases would be presented together in a hall expressly built for this purpose. While many ideas have been suggested, in all this time we have never seen a proposal as thoughtful and sensitive for the Slav Epic as Thomas Heatherwick’s concept, which will present Alphonse’s magnum opus in line with his original vision for how it should be displayed.
“This purpose-designed space will create a completely safe home for the Epic’s canvases and allow visitors for the first time to perceive the work in its entirety as Mucha himself would have wanted. Until the Epic finds the permanent home in Prague Alphonse envisioned, we cannot think of anywhere better or more appropriate for it to be than in Moravský Krumlov, whose people have played an important role in protecting the work.”
Interestingly, the addendum to the loan agreement approved by the city council includes a clause that would allow the city to temporarily exhibit the paintings in Prague for a period of ten months in 2028, marking the Epic’s centenary. The loan extension must now be approved by Prague’s city assembly before it officially takes effect.
The office of the deputy mayor did not respond to requests for comment.
