The World of Mucha: A Journey to Two Fairylands: Paris and Czech (PIE × Hiroshi Unno Art Series)

The title pretty much says it all. While no book has all of Mucha's works, and you will have to buy multiple Mucha books to get close to the breadth of his catalogue; if you can only buy one, this book is it. Hands down.It covers his most familiar and iconic works of course. But what is most impressive is everything else. Whether it be postcard collections; his decorative patterns; magazine covers; bank notes; stamps; package design; book illustrations and especially a lot more of his underrepresented and underappreciated realist works. Unfortunately, his work in architecture gets only a brief mention, and his work in jewelry design and sculpture is ignored. But considering that he only dabbled in such things in comparison to his other works, as well as the sheer amount of content overall, this oversight is quite forgivable. Some pictures get a really good treatment in terms of size and occupation of page space. Some pages have collections of smaller pictures that I wish were a bit larger. But considering that this book is pushing almost 400 pages, and most Mucha art books are in the 200 pages or less range, I think they clearly did the best they could in terms of trying to squeeze in as many pieces as possible from Mucha's illustrious career.The cover is a magnificent foil-embossed dust jacket; and the pages have an overall nice feel to them as well.The book, is unfortunately only semi-bilingual; most of the text is in Japanese. But honestly, if you want more detailed textual information about his life and works, there are plenty of other Mucha books for that. If you just simply want one of the most comprehensive visual compendiums of Mucha's work. Period. This is it.

GORGEOUS!!!! Love it. What a special find. I can't believe I just discovered Hiroshi Unno's books and by happy accident on here while looking for something else. So of course when I saw he did a book on Mucha, my favorite artist of all time, I had to get this. The layout of this book is so freaking beautiful and the attention to details are insane. This guy or whoever designed the book definitely knows graphic design and design composition. The text is mostly in Japanese but I don't mind at all. Even if the whole thing was in Japanese I would not care. There are some parts translated in English and all the artworks have captions in English too. I was a little worried that it would be small or flimsy book cause of the soft cover but it's absolutely not. It's actually quite heavy. My only small nitpick would be I wish some of the artworks weren't printing on matte finished paper cause some of the coloring does come off a *bit* dull and soft/fuzzy looking and not as rich in color but nevertheless, stunning overall. The dust jacket even has silver foil. So cool! His books are a bit on the pricy side but honestly very worth it. I also purchased the European Fantasy Art one and very happy I did. I definitely have my eye on getting a few others in the future hopefully. I would get every one of his books if I could. A total collectible!

Beautiful, sturdy book, but there is very little translation of text into English, which is a shame to miss the learning of details about the art.

My real review is 4.5 stars, and I only deduct a little bit for this reason. I like this series of books by this author very much, but so much space is wasted in sticking to the fancy trade dress, design-y page borders and so on, that opportunities to showcase the art better are wasted, especially in this book about Mucha. However, it does have some very nice fold out pages for a few larger images, and there are many, many pictures in here I have never seen anywhere. These books are a great value for the money. Of all the books in this series, this is the one that needs a bigger scope to showcase the art. You will be disappointed if you want to read it, as all of the Japanese text is not translated, but there are sections in English. I hope this publisher will consider larger, coffee table scale books in future to better showcase the art.

There is a lot of great art in this book and most is at an agreeable size, but now and then you will wish the book was just maybe 2 inches taller and wider..That said, there is a lot of good art in this book, and thankfully some of the "Slav Epic" as well.You will not regret this book, you will just want "a little more.."

Ordered a second copy to give as a gift

This is a beautiful book. I only wish all the descriptions were written in English. Very complete with many illustrations I hadn't seen.

La descripción dice que está en ingles... Pero la gran mayoría del texto estaba en japonés...

The best book on Mucha, ever, and I have quite a bit of Mucha books calendars. This book has evrything, I mean everything, from elearly sketches, stamps and other works I've never seen at all. An exceptional art book, if you also like art noveau style too. Really glad I got this, will be looking at this for a wery long time for art reference.

Definitely the most complete selection of his art of ever seen in one book. I own every mucha Art Book published in English and visually this is definitely the best and most complete.As a lover of illustration art I will be looking at future releases from this publisher with great interest.

another great PIE book

Es verdaderamente una galería muy completa del trabajo de Mucha, no me incómoda que gran parte del libro este en otro idioma, ya que lo empleo para analizar su trabajo y composición.

The English does not translate the Japanese texts completely, luckily I can read both. The cover is so sparkly it’s dreamy. The paintings are well printed and none overlap. Clear and feature all of his major works and way more. It’s entertaining even if I’m not interested to read every word. The biography is very detailed.