Lunar Landing: Cosmic Themes and Feminism in the Works of Ester Krumbachová, Olja Ivanjicki, Kiki Kogelnik, and Evelyne Axell

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The first artificial satellite remained in orbit for only three months, yet its brief trajectory set in motion nearly two decades of technological and ideological rivalry between the USSR and the United States. The 1960s saw this competition intensify, culminating in NASA’s Apollo 11 lunar landing on July 20, 1969. Television broadcasts, illustrated magazines, newspapers, and science fiction films circulated images of rockets, astronauts, and cosmic landscapes, creating a shared visual language that crossed geopolitical boundaries and appeared in both art and experimental costume design in the United States and socialist countries alike.

This article focuses on artworks from the 1960s by women artists whose practices engaged with the visuality and spirit of space exploration. Although based in different countries, they shared an interest in the extraterrestrial, expressed through costume design or performance. Their engagement with space travel was not merely stylistic or a reflection of the trends at the time. A set of visual similarities, such as astronauts, helmets, and rockets, provides the basis of reading these practices next to each other. Through the works of Czech costume designer Ester Krumbachová, Yugoslav artist Olja Ivanjicki, Austrian-American artist Kiki Kogelnik, and former actress and artist Evelyne Axell from Belgium, this essay argues that Space Race imagery functioned as a shared visual language that women artists used to question their role in society.

The Space Race did not appear in the same way in the works of these four women: sometimes, it signaled the possibility of an imagined future (utopian or otherwise) seen through the lens of science fiction, while at other times the Space Race functioned as a reflection of the present day. In each case, however, their adoption of the visual language of future societies, spaceships, moon landings, and astronauts allowed these artists to propose models of female empowerment, often as they were moving between or within artistic or social milieus dominated by men. In the works of Ivanjicki and Axell, the Space Race also offered an opportunity to reflect on sexuality and objectification in a new way, through the figure of the female astronaut. Situated across both the socialist and capitalist worlds during the Cold War—and sometimes moving between them—these women conceptualized the Space Race as a different kind of agonistic field, one in which new and particular imaginaries could reshape patterns of objectification, modes of consumption, and gender norms.

Ester Krumbachová: Costume design for the film Ikarie XB-1, engraved drawings, ink, paper, 1962 © Ester Krumbachová Archive

Despite being a multitalented figure of Czech New Wave cinema, the work of costume designer, screenwriter, and director Ester Krumbachová has received sustained scholarly attention only in the past decade. She began her career in theater costume design in the 1950s in České Budějovice before transitioning into film in the early 1960s. Krumbachová was one of the most active costume designers in her country, working on more than twenty films throughout the decade. The two films that helped launch her career in cinema—Ikarie XB-1 (1963) and The Man from the First Century (1962)—were made at a time when space exploration was a central theme in Cold War politics, and her work on these films exposed her to the discourse of the cosmos, technological progress and utopian futures.

In 1962, she was invited to design the costumes of Ikarie XB-1, Jindřich Polák’s science fiction film. The Czechoslovak government provided Polák with a generous budget, in no small part because from the 1950s onward, promoting the achievements of Soviet space exploration became a geopolitical priority. Film, with its broad appeal, proved an ideal medium for disseminating socialist ideology and projecting affluence. For a small Eastern Bloc country like Czechoslovakia, science-fiction cinema offered a platform to demonstrate both artistic sophistication and technological modernity. At the same time, costume design, like the fashion industry, was shaped by the scarcity of quality materials in socialist Czechoslovakia. Often having to navigate tight budgets, Krumbachová had developed a particular resourcefulness and enjoyed reimagining existing garments, using found materials. Her signature style appeared in small details—accessories, hats, and collars—that elevated otherwise simple outfits. It was unusual, then, for Krumbachová to work on such a grandiose production.

Ester Krumbachová’s costumes in Oldřich Lipský’s The Man from the First Century, still from the movie.

Adapted from Stanisław Lem’s novel The Magellan Nebula, Ikarie XB-1 was intended to showcase the advancement of Czech cinema alongside Soviet space research. The premise of the movie was that in the future, capitalism would be abolished, and with the support of science and technology, a more enlightened communist society would be formed. To bring the social utopia closer to the present, as Markéta Uhlířová argues, filmmakers revised the science fiction design from the 1950s.(Marketa Uhlirova, “Voyage through Space, Time and Utopian Modernism in Ikarie XB-1,” in Czech Cinema Revisited: Politics, Genres, Techniques (Prague: National Film Archive, 2017), 338–365.) Until then, the design of sci-fi had drawn from Futurism, Cubism, Expressionism, Constructivism, Art Deco, and Bauhaus styles. But once space exploration in the real world provided artists with authentic visual inspirations for cosmonaut suits and spaceship designs, there was a demand for more realistic depictions. Henceforth, objects, clothes, and interiors were designed with functionality and authenticity in mind.

This shift is also visible in Krumbachová’s two sci-fi costume design works, created just one year apart. The movie The Man from the First Century followed an extravagant aesthetic, telling the story of a Czech upholsterer in Prague, who is accidentally launched into space in an experimental rocket. Much of the film’s satire comes from the character’s clumsy navigation of a futuristic world filled with imagined technologies, including computers, robotic tour guides, and flying cars overseen by air-traffic controllers in jumpsuits and helmets inspired by space travel. Krumbachová’s costumes amplified this absurdity. Metallic fabrics, quirky plastic accessories, and asymmetrical cuts parodied the conventions of pre-war science-fiction cinema while reinforcing the film’s critique of Western consumerist culture. Beyond their humorous effects, these futuristic costumes exposed capitalist material obsession in an ironic fashion.

Ester Krumbachová’s costumes in Oldřich Lipský’s The Man from the First Century. © Narodni filmovy archiv (National Film Archive).

By contrast, the costume design of Ikarie XB-1 reflected the demand for a more authentic, sleek design. Moving away from overtly fantastical shapes carried the message that this new style would soon become available to everyone. Krumbachová and her fellow designers, Jan Skalický and Vladimír Synek, created sleek, unisex outfits, garments that could even be worn outside the movie set. Instead of emphasizing gendered tailoring—such as an hourglass shape for women or an exaggerated, broad-shouldered silhouette for men—the costumes favored relaxed, dropped-shoulder lines. The casual, utilitarian look aligned with the socialist idea of equality between men and women. The practicality and durability of workwear was preferred over delicate materials such as fur, silk, or decorative textiles, which were associated with bourgeois values and Western consumerism. Yet, drawings show a jacket with the Ikarie logo on its back—slightly reminiscent of American baseball bomber jackets—a youth culture staple in the US. The incorporation of the bomber jacket can be understood as the shifting of socialist visual culture in the 1960s. The appearance of Western-style clothing in Ikarie XB-1 reflects a gradual repositioning of fashion in the Eastern Bloc, suggesting that clothing can express taste and to some extent, individuality.(Markéta Uhlířová, “Fashions Fit for the New Age in Jindřich Polák’s Ikarie XB-1″ (1963), a revised excerpt from Markéta Uhlířová, “Voyage through Space, Time and Utopian Modernism in Ikarie XB-1,” in Czech Cinema Revisited.)

Sci-fi provided Krumbachová with an opportunity to experiment with less gendered forms of costume design and take a significant step forward in her career. However, working in the film industry exposed her to the contradictions between the socialist state’s rhetoric and women’s actual experiences. Although socialist Czechoslovakia promoted gender equality and increased women’s participation in the labor force, lived experiences were often different. Krumbachová was vocal about these tensions, particularly due to her collaboration with filmmaker Věra Chytilová on the provocative feminist movie, Daisies (1966). Portraying two young women pursuing pleasure, the film carried an anti-patriarchal and anarchic message and was described as a “refuse” that “trampled upon Socialist achievements”(Francis McKee, “Agitation,” in Ester Krumbachová, ed. Edith Jeřábková and Kateřina Svatoňová (Prague: Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, 2021), 19.) by the authorities. In addition, her contribution to the political satire A Report on the Party and Guests (1966), prevented Krumbachová from working in film for decades. Krumbachová continued making art in the sanctuary of her home—including drawing, painting and poetry—but she was unable to fully revive her film career. After being marginalized, cosmic themes migrated from the screen to her everyday life. She believed that human civilization was not the only one in the universe, followed UFO reports, and even wrote about her own encounter with an alien in a letter to a friend.(Edith Jeřábková, “War Ikarie XB-1,” in Ester Krumbachová, 346.) Her turn from the extraterrestrial to more occult topics, such as alchemy and magic, also helped her cope with her alienation from the regime-guarded, mainstream art world.

Olja Ivanjicki with her “Olja doll” before the doll was burned, 1964. Photo by Miodrag Djordjevic. Courtesy Olga Olja Ivanjicki Foundation Archive.

The search for magical realms and a fascination with outer space and cosmic themed costume design are also common features of the work of Yugoslav artist Olja Ivanjicki. Astronauts appeared in her work as early as the late 1950s, which can be connected to her family’s emigration from Russia, reflecting her feelings of alienation on a personal level. Her sense of dislocation and longing for an imagined home may also explain why astronauts and space travel appear repeatedly in her work. Moreover, her father taught ballistics and often read Russian science-fiction stories to his daughter, contributing to Ivanjicki’s early interest in space travel.(Olja Ivanjicki, Painting the Future, with an introduction by Sue Hubbard (London: Phillip Wilson Publishers, 2009), 10.)

The heightened media presence of Space Race imagery during the 1960s also influenced the motifs in her art, which spanned painting, costume design, architecture, and performance. Ivanjicki encountered the iconography of the rivalry from both sides, due to the higher level of freedom in her country. Decoupled from the Soviet bloc, Non-Aligned Yugoslavia developed a model of market socialism within which a modest level of consumerism and a relatively open public sphere emerged. Yugoslav citizens could travel without a visa to Western countries, allowing a degree of mobility unthinkable for people in the Eastern Bloc. Olja Ivanjicki became the first Yugoslav artist to receive a Ford Foundation scholarship and left Belgrade for the United States in 1962. There, she encountered Pop Art, which remained a lasting influence on her work. Inspired by the movement, she included quintessentially American symbols in her paintings and collages: the flag, the dollar bill, the Statue of Liberty, and so on. But she also started to incorporate more provocative, militaristic imagery—soldiers, helmets, the atomic bomb, guns—and these recurring motifs both celebrated the cultural hegemony and aspirational allure of the American dream while exposing its darker underbelly of aggression and dominance.

Following her return from the US, Ivanjicki was eager to present her Pop Art works, particularly a series of suitcases filled with found objects, inspired by Robert Rauschenberg’s assemblages. She struggled to find a gallery in Belgrade that would exhibit her works, but finally the art space Graphic Collective agreed and Ivanjicki sent a telegram to several art journalists inviting them to her debut as a Pop artist on October 1, 1964.(Lina Džuverović, “Yugoslav Pop, Female Artists and the Emergence of Feminist Agency,” in Pop Art and Beyond: Gender, Race and Class in the Global Sixties, ed. K. Minioudaki and M. Hadler (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022), 8.) Her show received negative feedback from both the public and critics, who called her work vulgar.

The rejection and mockery Ivanjicki received for this show did not set her back, and she organized a happening at the same gallery a year later. In an archival photograph, Ivanjicki is shown next to a doll, dressed in a silver, glittering suit and gloves, and holding a helmet inscribed with the name “Olja.” Another photograph from her estate features a wooden crate, containing an object reminiscent of a DIY rocket. The reverse side of the image bears the stamp of the Graphic Collective Gallery, the date 1965, and a handwritten note: “Šilja packed for a flight into space.” These images document a happening in which she staged a takeoff that evoked the atmosphere of Cape Kennedy (now Cape Canaveral), the NASA installation from which many major space missions were launched. Ivanjicki described the happening as a protest against war, atomic or otherwise. In an interview she suggested that it provoked strong reactions, including the view that she herself should have been burned rather than the doll.(Lazar Lazić, “Olja lansira ‘hepeninges,’” Student 24 (1965): 11.) Her cosmic imagery operated as a vehicle for articulating anti-war and anti-authoritarian politics through the visual language of technological spectacle. By assembling and “launching” her own rocket as well as constructing an astronaut alter ego, Ivanjicki entered the field of space exploration symbolically, asserting women’s capacity to participate in scientific and technological advancement.

BITEF Theatre opening night, Olja Ivanjicki as an astronaut, 1989. Photo by Zoran Krsljananin. Courtesy Olga Olja Ivanjicki Foundation Archive.

Her happening may also be interpreted in relation to the broader political climate of Yugoslavia, especially the student protests that would erupt three years later in Belgrade, Sarajevo, and Zagreb. It was the first major protest movement in Yugoslavia after World War II and the demonstrators criticized the emerging “red bourgeoisie” that benefited from the socialist system at the expense of ordinary workers.(Philippe Alcoy, “Yugoslav Students in the 1968 Wave of Revolt: An Interview with Dragomir Olujić,” Verso Blog, July 5, 2018, https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/3913-yugoslav-students-in-the-1968-wave-of-revolt-an-interview-with-dragomir-olujic.) Students also demanded the democratization of the media as well as the right to gather and demonstrate. Ivanjicki’s happening anticipated these burgeoning tensions in her distinctively futuristic style, but by using the NASA project as its main reference, her work can be interpreted as a commentary on the increased Americanization of Yugoslavia’s culture during the 1960s.

Similarly to Ivanjicki, the work of Austrian-American artist Kiki Kogelnik was shaped by living in the US, Pop Art, and the Space Race. Encouraged by the American artist Sam Francis, she moved to New York in 1962, where she lived and worked in his studio at 940 Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan. There, she found herself in a community of artists including the likes of Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, and Tom Wesselmann. However, as a foreigner and a woman, Kogelnik did not quite fit in this community primarily composed of American men. Many women artists who engaged Pop Art’s aesthetics, themes, and methods remained mostly invisible for many years and only received curatorial and scholarly attention decades later.

Bergdorf Goodman window display (New York, 1965) featuring fur fashion designs by Emeric Partos and two works by Kiki Kogelnik: Untitled (Bomb), c. 1965, Mixed media with acrylic on bomb casing; Space Angel, 1965, Mixed media with aluminum on wood. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Kiki Kogelnik Foundation. © Kiki Kogelnik Foundation. All rights reserved.

Throughout the 1960s, her work was defined by a fascination with a technology-driven future. In her application for the Guggenheim Fellowship she wrote: “In describing my work I have frequently used the term ‘Space Art’ and this seems to define as closely as possible what I am trying to do: namely to create a variety of artificial objects, robots, constructions, and various mechanisms that would correspond to a space-age-society based on complete automation. In accordance with this basic concept I am using the most modern materials available – various types of plastic, metal foils, fluorescent paints and acetates, bomb-shells and aluminum discs.”(Kiki Kogelnik, Application for the J. S. Guggenheim Fellowship, 1965. Archives of the Kiki Kogelnik Foundation, New York.)

This approach manifested in her sculptures exhibited in 1965 in six window displays at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury department store in New York. It was not unusual for artists of the Pop Art movement to show their art in unconventional places. (For example, in 1961, Andy Warhol showed his paintings in the window display of Bonwit Teller, a New York City department store, and Claes Oldenburg opened up a storefront on the Lower East Side of Manhattan where he sold sculptures of clothes, shoes and pieces of cake or other pastries made out of plaster. These playful yet critical acts raised questions about the line between commodity and artwork, the artist’s self-representation and the nature of the commercial art market.)

Bergdorf Goodman window display (New York, 1965) featuring fur fashion designs by Emeric Partos and two works by Kiki Kogelnik: Lover Boy, 1963, Mixed media with pie tins, muffin tins and cigar tubes; Spaceship, 1963, Mixed media with pie tins and cigar tubes. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Kiki Kogelnik Foundation. © Kiki Kogelnik Foundation. All rights reserved. 

It is not entirely clear how Kogelnik got the unique opportunity of showing her works at a luxury department store, but her connections to Fischbach Gallery, where she participated in a group show, and to Jacques Kaplan, a furrier and art collector, likely played a role. She displayed altogether twelve artworks, including Lover Boy (1963), Space Angel (1965), Untitled (Bomb), c. 1965, and Spaceship (1963). In these works she juxtaposed the typical visual metaphors of space exploration, such as the rocket, the interior design of the spaceship and the protective gears of the astronauts with household items. Incorporating these shiny and easily accessible objects, typically used by women, such as baking trays and vacuum cleaner hoses(Angela Stief, “Power Up – Back to the Future,” in Power Up – Female Pop Art, ed. Angela Stief and Martin Walkner (Vienna: Kunsthalle Wien, 2011), 86.) she reflected the unbalanced distribution of domestic labor. By presenting symbols of otherwise hidden social expectations that positioned women primarily as responsible for housework and caregiving, Kogelnik foregrounded an issue that limited women’s career possibilities and participation in the public sphere. Moreover, for many women preoccupied with homemaking or juggling employment with household chores, the commodities at Bergdorf Goodman seemed as distant as outer space. While the predominantly male representatives of Pop Art incorporated household products into their work from a detached, ironic perspective, for many women cleaning products and household advertising aimed at female consumers was not merely artistic inspiration, but their very reality.

Documentation of Kiki Kogelnik’s performance Moonhappening, Galerie nächst St. Stephan, 1969. © 1969 Kiki Kogelnik Foundation. All rights reserved.

Kogelnik labeled her works that centered around space, aeronautics, robotics and cyborgs as “Space Art.” She ended this period with a work responding to the Moon landing in 1969. On July 21 of that year, she staged a performance at Galerie nächst St. Stephan in Vienna titled Moonhappening. Kogelnik installed two televisions—one color, one black and white—and then invited people to the gallery to watch the broadcast of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin setting foot on the Moon. As Armstrong took his first steps on the lunar surface, he remarked, “I can see the footprints of my boots.” Due to a delay in the audio transmission, Kogelnik didn’t catch the whole sentence, so she made a stencil reading “I can see my footprints.” Not correcting this imperfect quote, Kogelnik emphasized the fragility of mass media and its interpretation, showing how human communication remains fragmented, even at a technological peak. She then printed the misheard words in bright orange ink onto an image of the Moon using silkscreen. 500 copies of the print could be purchased at the gallery, each bearing her signature, the edition number and the date and exact time of the signing. With this special edition, she aimed to create memorabilia of such a historic event, similar to commemorative stamps, ironically pointing out the commodification of the lunar landing. However, this final act of her space works was the last gesture to the idea of space as a place where women could co-exist with men in a utopian place of equality. Closing a decade of space-related production with this performance, she also reflected her interest in new media, time-based art, and the inclusion of the audience in the creative process.

Performance and happenings were also a common component of the work of Belgian Pop Artist Evelyne Axell, who was an acclaimed actress before turning to painting. Spending her summer holidays in Cannes, meeting stars of postwar cinema, Axell maintained a glamorous lifestyle while building a successful acting career. Yet while in the limelight, Axell also encountered the limits of the television and film industry, where women were frequently subjected to sexism and exploitation. Unhappy with her work as a TV presenter, she left her filmmaker husband’s professional sphere behind. In 1964, she moved to a house in Brussels with a studio space and began painting under the guidance of Belgian surrealist René Magritte.

As an artist without a formal education and with a background in theater and film, she was considered an outsider within the often exclusionary sphere of fine art. Her experimentation with Pop Art didn’t help matters. The movement was condemned and considered poor taste by major galleries in Brussels and Paris. But Axell was swept up by it when she encountered the works of British artists Allen Jones, Peter Phillips, Pauline Boty, Patrick Caulfield, and Joe Tilson while accompanying her husband Jean Antoine as he shot a documentary series on Pop Art in London.(Jean Antoine, “Stages in a Life Cut Short,” in From Pop Art to Paradise, ed. Isabelle Sauvage (Paris: Somogy Éditions d’Art, 2004), 13.) The movement’s influence could be seen in much of Axell’s work, which depicts the nude female body, sexual desire and homoerotic fantasies, further challenging the conventions of the art world.

In 1965, she started to incorporate Space Race themes into her art as well. She saw an emancipatory potential in this theme, and the extraterrestrial was a recurring theme to express her views on feminism. In 1966 she created the assemblage painting Valentine, an homage to the first female cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova. As the first woman in space, Tereshkova conducted extensive research into the impact of space travel on the female body, particularly the reproductive system. Some of the more sensational rumors alleged that she even had sex in space, solely for scientific research purposes, of course.(Anke Kempke, “Evelyne Axell,” in Power Up – Female Pop Art, 53.) Axell’s work features a female silhouette with a zipper that runs down the figure, and the viewer is invited to pull it, revealing the woman’s nude body beneath. Inviting the viewer to unzip the canvas, Axell confronted the audience with their own voyeurism and their objectification of women’s bodies.

Evelyne Axell: Valentine, 1966, Photography by Paul Louis © Evelyne Axell/DACS 2015.

The painting is accompanied by an astronaut’s helmet, merging the sexuality of the female form with the apex of scientific achievement. By juxtaposing these seemingly opposed symbols, Axell paired scientific achievement and the sexualized image, reflecting the ways that women were sometimes disqualified from certain professions because of their gender. For example, early aerospace scientists believed that the female body was structurally and physiologically unfit for spaceflight.(Margaret A. Weitekamp, “NASA’s Early Stand on Women Astronauts: ‘No Present Plans to Include Women on Space Flights,’” National Air and Space Museum, March 17, 2016, accessed June 8, 2026, https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/nasas-early-stand-women.) At the same time, she interrogated the reality of male dominance not only in science and society, but also in the world of Pop Art itself, where female artists often struggled for recognition.

The astronaut’s helmet returned in another work in which Axell presented this interplay of spectacle, science, and sensuality. In 1969, at her exhibition opening at Galerie Foncke in the Belgian city of Ghent, she staged a performance featuring the wife of a well-known art collector. The woman entered the crowd wearing nothing but an astronaut’s helmet. Accompanied by music, Axell slowly dressed her, starting with lingerie and building up a complete outfit, performing a “reverse striptease.”(Anke Kempke, “Evelyne Axell,” 53.) The sensual, sapphic action of a woman dressing up another woman represented a subversive interpretation of sexual liberation and the objectification of the female body. Photos of the action show that the audience observed the act closely, evoking the spirit of group sex and the performances of the 1960s London Underground,(Anke Kempke, “Evelyne Axell,” 53.) where performers and the crowd formed a unified mass. The action was followed by an intense debate titled “The Sexual Revolution” led by French art critic Pierre Restany. Later that year, in the catalogue of Axell’s show at Templon Gallery, Restany compared her work to Niki de Saint Phalle, Yayoi Kusama, and Marisol, calling their art “womenpower.”(Jean Antoine, “Stages in a Life Cut Short,” 13.)This institutional framing proves that Axell entered the contemporary art discourse at the time. Her art, provocatively addressing questions of sexuality, the objectification of women’s body and their place in society, was only belatedly acknowledged by feminist art history.

Evelyne Axell: Happening, 1969, series of black and white photographs documenting a happening for the opening of Axell’s exhibition at the Foncke Gallery, Ghent, Belgium in 1969. From the archive of Broadway 1602.

Although Ester Krumbachová, Olja Ivanjicki, Kiki Kogelnik, and Evelyne Axell came from very different backgrounds, they all engaged Space Race aesthetics in their work. Through experimental costume design or performance, they commented on their own social and political situations during the Cold War, responding both to public events of their time and to their own specific positions as women in art and cinema. By casting their eyes beyond the Earth, they not only reflected the cultural imagination of the Space Race era but also used it as a canvas to explore new forms of artistic expression, critique, and agency. Reading these works side by side—created within the same decade, and in some cases the same year—suggests parallels in the social utility of Space Race iconography. Rather than isolating these women’s works within national art historical narratives or an established global discourse, they are best understood as synchronicities. Such a comparative framework illuminates overlooked oeuvres by artists whose works are left out of canonical histories—and it also reveals that the future possibilities opened up by the promise of space exploration could be adopted to effectively challenge the gendered norms of 1960s society, across the Cold War world.