...a new star is born. Probably one of Robert McCall's most famous paintings. An entire generation of Americans grew up seeing this painting on movie posters, video boxes, and book covers. The movie was 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Famed space artist Robert McCall passed away last Friday of a heart attack at the age of 90. His paintings helped and inspired Americans to the world of human space travel. His artwork graced the cover of LIFE magazine, the wall of Smithonian Air & Space Museum in Washington D.C., and US postage stamps. He also designed a number of the mission patches for the space shuttle program.
Robert McCall was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1919 and became interested in art at an early age. He won a scholarship to the Columbus Fine Art School and began his career working in a sign shop. He eventually moved to Chicago to work for advertising agencies and at the same time became consumed by science fiction stories. He worked on developing his talent in painting aviation aircraft. In fact, a number of his paintings depicting many US military aircraft grace the walls of the Pentagon and a number of US military bases. In the early 1960's, after painting a series of human space travel images for LIFE magazine, Stanley Kubrick contacted him and hired him to draw images for his new space movie written by Arthur C. Clarke.
Robert McCall's paintings can be found in virtually every state. His paintings even adorn the walls of the Spaceship Earth exhibit at Walt Disney World's Epcot Center.
The above painting is just one image of the mural Robert McCall painted at Smithsonian.
All images are courtesy of NASA/Robert McCall.
NOTE: Sorry for the oversized images. Never had an issue with this before. Either there were some changes made in HTML formats that I was unaware or the fact that I used DKos format this time rather than Photobucket. For those of you who want to rec my diary now PLEASE DO! ;)