I Wonder What My Heroes Think of the Space Race

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

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. Boshier was enthralled by the imagery of the American-Soviet 'space race' - the ideological battle for space exploration that dominated American and Soviet politics for two decades. Painted in 1962, 'I Wonder What My Heroes Think of the Space Race' captures the spirit of the race to get humans to the moon.

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.

Derek Boshier was born in Portsmouth and attended Yeovil School of Art (1953–57), and the Royal College of Art (1959–62) where he was one of a younger generation of British Pop Artists. He worked in media including painting, drawing, collage, and sculpture. Major group exhibitions featuring his work include Art and the Sixties at Tate Britain (2004) and Pop Art Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery (2007). In 1980 Boshier was invited to take up a Professorship at the University of Houston, Texas. He died in his home in Los Angeles in 2024.

People

Horatio, Viscount Nelson Nelson (1758 - 1805), Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865), Charles Hardin ('Buddy Holly') Holley (1936 - 1959), Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (1934 - 1968)

Places

Subjects

rocket, singing, rock & roll, pop music, Pop Art, space exploration, dog, rat, ape/monkey, cloud, flag, banner (as Subject), President of the United States, admiral

Materials & Techniques

canvas, oil, oil painting

Artist

Derek Boshier (1937 - 2024)

Title

I Wonder What My Heroes Think of the Space Race

Date

1962

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 241.00 cm, width: 174.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Sotheby's, 2 December 1976

Inscription

Signed verso

Provenance

Sold through Sotheby's, London, on 2 December 1976 (Lot 368); from which sale purchased by the Department of the Environment

GAC number

12661