The Soviets in Space Poster 1963 at the Science Museum London

In this episode, we’ll be visiting The Soviets in Space Poster 1963 at the Science Museum London. Welcome to Art, Culture & Books with me, Anthony King.

Soviet space posters often show a hopeful view of a better life through scientific progress. They depict new lands, planets, and societies, inspired by a movement called Russian Cosmism. The museum tell us: “Long live the world’s first female cosmonaut’: a Soviet poster (in Czech) celebrating Valentina Tereshkova, who orbited the Earth in Vostok 6 in June 1963. As with Sputnik in 1957, and with Yuri Gagarin, who had undertaken the first manned space flight in Vostok 1 on 12 April 1961, the flight of Tereshkova was an event deliberately loaded with symbolic meaning. It was to be another 19 years before the next female cosmonaut took to the skies.”

By Anthony King (c)