Artist Andrey Plotnov created a whole series of pictures devoted to Yuri Gagarin. It included works Goodbye, Earthmen! , Meeting the Spaceman, In my Home Town, treble painting On Home Ground. When Plotnov was painting them, he contacted the relatives and friends of Yuri Gagarin, made repeated trips to his home town of Gzhatsk, Smolensk Oblast. Now it is named Gagarin. Plotnov created the painting In my Home Town on the basis of sketches for which Yuri Gagarin had personally sat.

In the picture from the Belgorod State Art Museum, the artist captured the moment of Yuri Gagarin landing after his first space fight on 12 April 1961. Then he landed in the Saratov Oblast near the town of Engels. The spaceman is depicted in an orange space armour and a helmet inscribed with the USSR, his right hand raised in a gesture of salutation. There is a green field seen behind his back, and to his right there is a fragment of the Vostok spaceship.

Apart from pictures devoted to the first Soviet spaceman, Andrey Plotnov painted portraits, landscape paintings, historical and battle paintings, and scenes from fairy tales. There is an entire series of views of different cities of the world: New York, Paris, Naples, London and Venice. Plotnov also created pictures related to events of the October Revolution and the Great Patriotic War.

In 1943, Plotnov graduated with a diploma and became a war artist. He served in the Border Army Administration. He visited the places of major battles: in Kursk, Odessa and Sebastopol. He created his pictures and posters of military glory on the basis of sketches he had made there.

After the war, Andrey Plotnov painted a lot of industrial landscapes. He focused on depicting coalmines near Vorkuta and the Kuibyshev hydropower station. He also painted portraits of Soviet female athletes and actresses, poultry women and workers.