BEIJING, July 19 (Xinhua) -- A special exhibition on Art Nouveau pioneer Alphonse Mucha will be held in Beijing from Oct. 18 to Dec. 8, the National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) said Friday.

Jointly hosted by the NCPA and Czech Republic Prague National Museum of Arts and Crafts, Prague Art Museum and Western Bohemia Plzen Art Museum, the exhibition will showcase 244 exhibits including the posters, decorative sheets, book illustrations, oil paintings, photography, Art Nouveau furniture, clothes, jewelry, glass and ceramic works designed or created by Mucha.

Mucha (1860-1939) was internationally-renowned for pioneering Art Nouveau, a global art deco movement that took place in the late 19th century and 20th century.

The movement took a stand against the traditional decorative style by advocating drawing inspirations from Oriental art and returning to nature to extract abstract decorative patterns from the morphology of plants and flowers and replace stiff straight lines with organic, continuous curved lines.

More than 40 Art Nouveau exhibits will take viewers back to the Europe of the early 20th Century to see how the movement influenced people's daily lives at that time.