These painted wooden figures were included in an exhibition held at the MoMA in 2012, called Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900–2000, curated by Juliet Kinchin and Aidan O’Connor. They were designed by Vienna-born Czech avant-garde artist and designer Minka Podhajská (1881-1963) and belong to her “Series of Personifications of Childhood Misdeeds”, which you can see in full here.

According to the exhibition’s curatorial assistant, Aidan O’Connor, “the collection includes the child who can’t sit still and the one who eats too much, another who thinks too much; and the one, wearing glasses, who reads too much.”

Our misdeeds of choice for today are ‘reading too much’ and (I am guessing based on the swollen head) ‘thinking too much’.

I have not been able to find a full list of the misdeeds, aside from O’Connor’s comment, but we can try and work it out, referring to the photograph. Is the tallest one guilty of growing too much, I wonder? The yellow top it’s wearing looks decidedly small for its body. I would imagine the one with the long nose is guilty of lying all the time, and I can’t work out which one can’t sit still – perhaps the one with the tongue sticking out?

I think my favourite one might just be the blue one with the oversized, goofy smile. What is their misdeed? Do they not stop talking? Do they keep going up to people they don’t know and enthusiastically saying ‘hello’ repeatedly? Do they follow everyone around and ask, ‘will you be my friend?’ on a relentless loop?

What really attracts me to these toys (they are almost a hundred years old!) is how playful and relaxed they seem, how humorous, how perceptive, how conspiratorial.

 They play with the idea of cautionary tales in toy form, and it is interesting to notice the categories. Nothing remotely like this would be made today, and the inclusion of the boy who eats too much would be unthinkable. But it is quite curious to look at all of these ‘misdeeds’ lined up together – perhaps the fact that ‘thinking too much’ is on the same level as ‘eating too much’ gives a different kind of focus to things and a wonderful, welcome silliness.

 You can almost feel the weight and wobble of the head on the boy who thinks too much – is its owner trying his best not to think of anything, his tiny little eyes straining to stay wide open, like a deer caught in the headlights? Hold tight, here comes another thought!

 And reading too much - a dangerous misdeed if ever there was one! He reads in the playground, he reads under the covers when the lights are out, he reads in the bath, he reads on the toilet, and never, ever hears when someone is calling him. In fact, he is so badly affected that one eye has become substantially larger than the other.

 I remember when I did the portrait for the Shooting Target Toy (France, c.1920), I felt there was a ruthless edge to it, a somehow unpleasant concept of childhood at its core. I have the opposite feeling with these figures and can feel a genuine fondness for children and a dialogue with them.  Interestingly, there is no “child who won’t stop crying” here.

 A few decades later, Libuše Niklová would continue in the same tradition and in a very similar tone to Podhajská’s, as we saw with the lovely dog Rafan.

The Czech toy-making tradition is rich and fascinating and continues to flourish. On the occasion of the 2012 MoMA exhibition, the MoMa and the Czech Center in New York collaborated on a parallel exhibition called Orbus Pictus-Play Well, an interactive playing experience combining touch, music and visuals. You can watch a 5 minute video about it here.

Minka Podhaská was born in Vienna to Viennese Czech parents in 1881. She studied art and sculpture at Vienna’s Women's Art Academy and was part of a group of artists that included Gustav Klimt, with whom she often exhibited. She founded an art school for children, and also painted, illustrated books and designed toys for the Wiener Werkstätte, and then with the Artěl cooperative in Prague. You can see her here, painting during her studies in Vienna, and here in 1908, where she looks not unlike a Klimt painting.

It is especially nice to see her in 1928, with her pearls and her wavy hair, two years before these toys came out. In 1930 she seems to have created many different toys, including some rather fantastic animal money boxes. In different sites in Czech, she is referred to as a pioneer and ‘the mother of Czech toys’. Collector Tomáš Hejtmánek, owner of Arthouse Hejtmánek auction house, remarks that it was once said that if all her toys were laid out on the ground, they would fill thousands of square metres.

She is, like many other neglected figures in history, a fascinating woman, who became somewhat of a recluse in later years, having removed herself to the countryside during the Second World War to be left in peace. For those of us who weren’t familiar with her, let’s just say her name out loud a few times, just to make sure it sticks in our minds: Minka Podhajská, Minka Podhajská, Minka Podhajská. And repeat.

Forget the Avengers, this ragtag bunch of misfits might be the anti-heroes we all need.