09.04.2026. Exhibitions about space and humanity opened at the gallery at Mosfilm. The exhibition projects “People of Space” and “Worlds of Saratov Artists,” united by the theme of outer and inner space, opened on April 8 at the National Museum of Art and Photography at Mosfilm (Gallery at Mosfilm).

Two exhibitions located in adjacent museum halls tell about the paths of a person to a dream. One path begins in childhood with a plywood rocket in a city park and continues there, where thousands of specialists from the State Corporation “Roscosmos” daily turn this dream into reality. The other path is intended to create one’s own artistic galaxy, consisting of hundreds of planets of creative worlds by Saratov artists.

The general exhibition space of the museum, and two cosmospheres, external and internal, unite photographic works of the first orbital exhibition “Into the Space of the Russian Soul,” which returned to Earth in 2024 after almost a year-long stay at the International Space Station.

“LUDE KOSMOSA”, PHOTOGRAPHS BY RUSSIAN ARTISTS PYLAEV AND IVAN TIMOSHENKO

The project, prepared jointly by the State Corporation “Roscosmos” and the National Museum of Art and Photography at “Mosfilm” with the support of the Russian Peace Foundation, is not just a collection of impressive rocket launch footage. This is a story of the journey.

The path that begins in childhood — with that very dream when ordinary boys and girls climb onto a plywood rocket in the city park and look at the sky. And it continues there, where thousands of employees of the State Corporation “Roscosmos” — engineers, designers, flight control center operators, workers, cosmonauts — daily make this dream a reality.

Behind Ivan Timoshenko, whose photographs are presented at the “People of Space” exhibition, lie 14 years of work in the industry, 158 launches of space rockets, dozens of sent-off and met crews. In his frame — the closed, often invisible to the world work of specialists who create the country’s space story.

“Thank you very much for the opportunity to show my photographs, to show space images, to slightly lift the curtain on a closed industry. I was born in Baikonur, and my whole life is connected with space. I hope that in our work you will feel our passion, our love for space, because in each of these photographs there is a piece of soul,” said Ivan Timoshenko at the opening.

Artyom Pylaev, whose photograph is primarily focused on the person, captures the very “involvement” that turns thousands of separate efforts into a single, deafening moment of liftoff. For him, the rocket launch is the quintessence of enormous work: “Hundreds of hours of labor by thousands of people so that hundreds of tons of metal, fuel, and electronics vanish into the sky in a few seconds.”

“SEA OF SALTWATER FISHERMEN”, COLLECTION BY IGOR ASKASAEV

More than twenty years ago, he conceived an idea: not just to collect and exhibit works of art, but to create a genuine universe of Saratov art. Since 2014, Askasev’s “cosmic project” has been launched: all participants — practically all contemporary artists of Saratov — received from a collector clean “planets” made of papier-mâché and an offer to embody their imaginative worlds on a spherical surface, to create “their own cosmos,” each in their own technique and style.

The figurative embodiment of “worlds” is symbolically connected with the history of Saratov. It was here that Yuri Gagarin studied, here he learned to fly, and it was here that he landed after his historic flight. It was precisely in the Saratov region, in the city of Khvalynsk, with its remarkable relief, that Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin came up with the idea of a spherical perspective — a planetary sense of “worlds.” And for the work of the masters of the Saratov painting school, the theme of the unity of man and cosmos has always been one of the leading ones.

In the exhibition — only a small part of “Mir”: the earliest “planets,” born in the 2010s, by the older generation of Saratov masters — Viktor Chudin, Vladimir Solyanov, Vyacheslav Lopatin, Boris Davydov, Evgeny Yali, — and those that have appeared quite recently.

In this space, worlds of symbolists and abstractionists coexist with planets of primitives and expressionists, analysts and intuitivists, forming a diverse picture — the cosmos of Saratov art.

The exhibitions operate within the framework of the Space Week, approved by the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation, and are part of the extensive program of the International Festival of Arts “Into the Space of the Russian Soul,” dedicated to the 65th anniversary of the first human flight into space and the 65th anniversary of the Russian Peace Foundation. The exhibitions at the National Museum of Art and Photography at “Mosfilm” (“Gallery at Mosfilm”) are open for visitation from April 9, 2026, address – Mosfilmovskaya Street, building 1, structure 18.