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A perfectly spherical moon provides the central focus of Derek Boshier's classic British Pop Art painting of the 1960s. Intersected below is the Earth, its land masses dripping ominously like blood. Amid the clouds are Boshier's 'heroes', all of whom died tragically, either by assassination or accident. A half portrait of Lord Horatio Nelson in military dress and eye patch surveys the scene. Nearby, is the bearded figure of Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States, who was in office during the American Civil War. The spectacled face of Buddy Holly, the American rock and roll singer, stares out from the clouds. Floating below, inside a white space is Yuri Gagarin, the Soviet cosmonaut and national hero who was the first human to enter space and to orbit the Earth in 1961.
Derek Boshier was born in Portsmouth and studied at Yeovil School of Art and in the early 1960s, at the Royal College of Art, where he was one of a younger generation of British Pop artists. He has exhibited widely and is well represented in British public collections. Major group exhibitions of his work were held at Tate Britain in 2004 and at the National Portrait Gallery in 2007. Today Boshier lives and works in Los Angeles.
Title
I Wonder What My Heroes Think of the Space Race
Date
1962
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
H 241 x W 174 cm
Accession number
12661
Acquisition method
purchased from Sotheby's, 1976
Work type
Painting
Government Art Collection
Old Admiralty Building, Admiralty Place, London, Greater London SW1A 2BL England
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