Exhibition marks 90 years of popular Czech cartoon character Ferdy the Ant
One of the most beloved Czech cartoon characters, Ferdy the Ant or Ferda mravenec, turns 90 this year. Prague’s Villa Pellé is marking the anniversary with a new exhibition celebrating Ferdy the Ant’s creator, Ondřej Sekora.
Ondřej Sekora, a sports correspondent, columnist and cartoonist, published his first regular comic strip with Ferdy the Ant in the daily Lidové noviny in 1933.
In the years that followed, the tiny black ant with a characteristic red scarf with black polka dots wrapped around his neck, went on to become the hero of countless children’s books, cherished by generations of Czech children.
Tomáš Prokůpek from the Moravian Museum in Brno is the author of a new exhibition dedicated to Ondřej Sekora, the man who created Ferdy the Ant:
“Ferdy the Ant is an extremely well-conceived and precisely drawn character. You can't even tell from the art style that the drawing is 90 years old. It is really timeless.
“Moreover, the insect world can easily be used as a metaphor. Sekora himself transformed this metaphor in various ways, taking into account the time he was living in, and it still works today.”
During the 1930s and early 1940s, Ondřej Sekora created a number of cartoon characters, including Brouk Pytlík or Pouch the Beetle, but none of them gained such fame as Ferdy the Ant.
Soon after the first comic strips appeared in Lidové noviny, Sekora started publishing children’s books centred around Ferdy and his adventures in the insect world, which gained enormous success.
Ferdy the Ant also starred in a puppet and animated TV series. In the 1980s, Sekora’s family even signed a deal with an international co-producer. However, the resulting series had little in common with the original character, says Mr. Prokůpek:
“It was animated somewhere in Korea. The producer wanted to create something like Maya the Bee, and wasn't really interested in Ferdy the Ant.
“The result has little to do with the original poetics. As far as I know, Czech Television is planning an animated series, which I hope will be more faithful to the original.”
The exhibition in Villa Pellé presents Ondřej Sekora’s original book illustrations, newspaper drawings and cartoons, as well as puppets based on his designs.
It also reflects Sekora’s love for rugby. Sekora was one of the first propagators of the sport in Czechoslovakia and coined the Czech rugby terminology:
“We found a diploma in his archive that he received from the Moravian rugby association in 1944 for his role in the development of Czech rugby.
“At the time Sekora could no longer work as a journalist. He had a Jewish wife and as a result, he was fired from Lidové noviny and eventually ended up in a German labour camp.”
Following Sekora’s war-time experiences, his cartoon character became increasingly committed to the new communist regime. Nevertheless, most of his books have withstood the test of time and are still popular among children today.
The exhibition entitled “Ondřej Sekora Known and Unknown” runs in Villa Pellé until May 14.
