Raquel Forner, Return of the Astronauts, 1969, oil on canvas. Her painting, Return of the Astronauts, showcases this new subject matter, as she combined elements of real life-the work was a reference to the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon-and her own imagination. With these first few paintings, she became one of the earliest artists to depict outer space in paintings, and she continued to create images of space almost exclusively until her death in 1988. In their place, Forner created a storybook mythology, brightly colored, and filled with abstracted figures. The subject of space travel then slowly began to creep into her work-something about its thematic content gripped her, and the dark, war-torn landscapes in her older work started to recede. Forner became interested in international efforts in the space program and took note of the all-male, military-trained programs. By the 1950s, Forner’s imaginings were so macabre that they teetered on the edge of apocalyptic. They stood in desolate landscapes and warned of future war, a message that increased in desperation with each work.
She populated her paintings in this era with archetypal female figures, oversized and posed as symbols of recurring suffering. Forner made use of the surreal styles popularized in Paris at the time by artists such as Salvador Dali, melting the physics of reality to match the destructive violence she saw around her. The paintings that poured from Forner in the subsequent years were fittingly shadowed and brooding. Raquel Forner, Icaru, 1944, oil on canvas.
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