The Theme of Space Exploration in the Work of Yuri Shvets, the Production Designer of The Space Flight (1935)

<jats:p>The article is devoted to the work of the master, who, according to a number of researchers, was one of the founders of science fiction painting in the USSR, Yuri Pavlovich Shvets (1902–1972), the production designer of The Space Flight (1935) and other films. The author of the article clarifies the master’s biographical information on the basis of archival materials. In addition to the commemorative perspective, the article for the first time considers the specifics of the artist’s visual solutions for the films, as well as his paintings on space exploration. Impressively embodied by the artist, the fantastic visualization of the cosmos and the coming transformations of humanity in the Universe is researched with an emphasis on the figurative structure and motifs of the works. This leads to the appeal to a greater extent to the cultural and iconographic method, rather than formal stylistic analysis. The reception of Yu. Shvets’s contribution to art is traced, among other things, on the materials of little-known publications of the 1970s and 1980s.</jats:p>