COMIC STRIP CONVENTIONS IN THE WORK OF ONDREJ SEKORA

• Authors: Zackova H.
• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

Few Czech works from the period before 1945 fulfil the criteria of the genre of comics. The oscillation between journalistic drawing, illustration and the comic strip was most obvious in the work of Ondrej Sekora. It was this artist who came closest to the comics category in the period before 1945. Although much has been written about Sekora, his work has never been analysed from the perspective of the comics genre. From 1918 to 1945, Ondrej Sekora was practically the only person in Czechoslovakia to produce comic strips in the true sense of the word, systematically. Although he created a number of conventional works, he owed his renowned and lasting popularity to the character of 'Ferda Mravenec' (Ferda the Ant). This comic dates from the very end of the period under consideration. Sekora modernised the graphic style and content of children's cartoons through Ferda's stories. The superb quality and novelty of his approach is obvious when one compares him with the other artists working in this field. In addition, Sekora's cartoons were thoroughly original. Sekora was an eminent Czech comic-strip artist, both in terms of the quantity and the quality of his output. His work also included the format of the strip of journalistic drawings united by a common theme; very early on, he also included narration. He used the panel as well as bubbles. At the end of the 1920s, his characters Hnát and Patrcka were very popular. In the course of drawing the comic adventures of this pair, the artist moved from the classic comic-strip format with bubbles to strips of drawings. These were not in panels; the text was located outside the image field. Sekora returned to the classic comic strip at the beginning of the 1940s. Sekora was an important innovator of the Czech cartoon, modernising the content as well as the established format. He was one of the few cartoonists to cross the boundary between the cartoon and the comic strip. His major works in this type of art form include the above-mentioned 'Hnát a Patrcka' in 'Lidové noviny', and 'Kapitán Ani Muk, Vorisek a Missinka' and 'Bedrisek a Vorisek', which appeared in 'Pestrý týden'.

Keywords

EN

CZECH COMICS; FERDA MRAVENEC; SEKORA ONDREJ

Discipline

• ARTS_&_ARCHITECTURE: ARTS & ARCHITECTURE

• Publisher: Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Umění (Art)
• Year: 2006
• Volume: 54
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 343-356
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Zackova H.

• H. Zackova, Redakce Umeni, Husova 4, 110 00 Prague, Czech Republic

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

07CZAAAA01884031