The Lucien Rudaux Memorial Gallery
In the winter of 2000, the IAAA created a “Hall of Fame” into which celebrated masters of the genré of Space Art would be inducted. Selecting a name to represent this distinguished and prestigious honor, in recognition and in acknowledgement for lifetime contributions to Astronomical Art, the IAAA instituted the Lucien Rudaux Memorial Award. Presented initially, and posthumously, to: Lucien Rudaux himself, Chesley Bonestell and Ludek Pesek and also to the artistic legends: Robert T. McCall, Jack Coggins, and Frederick C. Durant III.
2000
Lucien Rudaux 1874-1947
Lucien Rudaux was, first and foremost, an astronomer and became director of the observatory at Donville, Normandy. He also wrote and illustrated his own books, such as the sought-after classic Sur les autres mondes. Through his telescope, he observed the “limb” of the Moon, where its battered surface is seen in profile against the black sky. While other artists showed lunar mountains as being steep, jagged peaks, Rudaux painted them as rounded and eroded—not by the elements but by eons of impacts by meteorites, extremes of temperature and electrostatic levitation of the dust. His paintings often resemble Apollo photographs, yet they were produced far before anyone ever went to the Moon. A crater on Mars has been named after him.
Chesley Bonestell 1888-1986
Chesley Bonestell, architect, artist, astronomer and known as the “Father of Modern Space Art” was born January 1, 1888 in San Francisco, California. He studied architecture and worked on major structures, including the Golden Gate Bridge and the Chrysler Tower. He has had three successful careers in art; the best is the one he commenced in 1944, as an artist/illustrator of space flight and astronomical subjects.
His background in astronomy began when at ten he read Laplace’s nebular hypothesis. After World War I he worked as a special artist on the Illustrated London News and on London evening papers. In 1938, he began a second career as a motion picture special effects artist. Within a few years his unique skill in creating realistic scenes made him the most sought-after matte artist in Hollywood. Working on such pictures as War of the Worlds, When Worlds Collide, and Destination Moon, Bonestell refined his space painting techniques. He says: “As my knowledge of the technical side of the motion picture industry broadened, I realized I could apply camera angles as used in the motion pictures studio and illustrate ‘travel’ from satellite to satellite, showing Saturn exactly as it would look”.
Nearly forty years ago he entered his best known career; illustrating astronomical scenes and space flight. During the next decade he created some of his most compelling works: illustrations of manned visits to the Moon and planets. This was a decade before there were national programs for large rockets and satellite flight. It was a time when space flight was the dream of a few enthusiasts, certainly before the subject was professionally acceptable – or even respectable.
Bonestell’s ground breaking space illustrations appeared in major publications including: Life, Coronet, Collier’s, Scientific American, and Astounding Science Fiction. He began collaborating with Willy Ley, the author of the classic Rockets, Missiles and Men in Space. Ley and Bonestell produced The Conquest of Space and Beyond the Solar System. Teaming up with Wernher von Braun and others, they brought out Conquest of the Moon. and Arthur C. Clarke and Bonestell toured the planets in Beyond Jupiter.
Chesley Bonestell’s deep interest in, and knowledge of, astronomy served him well in his depictions of our Solar System. His training in architecture enabled him to render accurate perspective and visual angles. His work is a beacon to all who live and work in the world of space; whether painting it or building it. An asteroid has been named after him.
Ludek Pesek 1919-1999
Ludek Pesek was born in Czechoslovakia and attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. He became interested in astronomy and Space Art at the age of 19, inspired by a telescope at school and a book by Lucien Rudaux. He first produced his own work at that time, and his first publications were The Moon and Planets and Our Planet Earth. He thought of himself as both illustrator and fine artist. His work first reached US readers through National Geographic Magazine. Previous to the Mars article he had painted 15 scenes for an article called Journey to the Planets . In 1967 Ludek wrote his first science-fiction novel, Log of a Moon Expedition which he illustrated in black and white. Another, The Earth Is Near won Prize of Honour in Germany in 1971. It was published in the UK and USA in 1974. He illustrated Space Shuttles in 1976. He worked with writer Peter Ryan on several slim books for children: Journey to the Planets, Planet Earth, The Ocean World and UFOs and Other Worlds; he later worked with the same author on the large-format Solar System. He also illustrated the excellent Bildatlas des Sonnensystems, with German text by Bruno Stanek. From 1981 to 1985 he produced a series of 35 paintings on The Planet Mars and a series of 50 paintings, He has produced several 360-degree panoramas for projection in the domes of planetariums at Stuttgart, Winnipeg and Lucerne, and has exhibited in Washington, DC, Boston, Nashville, Stuttgart, Berne, Lucerne, Zurich, and other venues. His work is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution.
Robert McCall 1919-2010
Robert T. (Bob) McCall was born in 1919. His training included studies at the Columbus School of Art and Design and the Art Institute in Chicago in the late 1930s.
During World War II, McCall enlisted in the Army Air Corps and became a bombardier instructor. After the war, he and his wife, artist Louise McCall, moved to Chicago and later New York, where he worked as an advertising illustrator. Through the Society of Illustrators, McCall was invited to produce paintings for the U.S. Air Force.
His bold, colorful canvases depict the visions of America’s space program since its beginnings. In the early 1960s, McCall was one of the first artists selected for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Fine Arts Program after producing future space concepts for Life magazine. This connection led to a number of patch designs for space missions, a U.S. Postal Service commemorative stamp set, and murals at NASA field centers. Several astronauts include his artwork in their collections.
McCall’s most visible work is a six-story mural in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., which is seen by over six million visitors annually. His most widely recognized work is the painting of a massive double-ringed space station for the Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Jack Coggins
Jack Coggins was born in London and came to the United States while still a child. After studying at the Grand Central School of Art and the Art Students League in New York, he devoted most of his time to marine painting. During World War II he did many illustrations for Life magazine, as well as many commercial clients. From 1943 until the end of the war he served as a U.S. Army correspondent in Europe. Then, in the 1950s, he executed covers for science-fiction magazines, most notably Galaxy and Fantasy and Science Fiction. In 1951 and 1952, Coggins collaborated with the late Fletcher Pratt on two classic books, Rockets, Jets, Guided Missiles and Space Ships and By Spaceship to the Moon . The books were released amidst the great wave of national interest in space travel that swept the country in the 1950s. Like the Collier’s magazine series on space travel, the two books made the prospect of space exploration seem a very practical possibility, and there are many space scientists today who retain fond memories of the influence these books had on their careers.
Frederick C. Durant III
Frederick C. Durant III was heavily involved in rocketry in the United States during the period between the end of World War II and the mid-1960s. He worked for several different aerospace organizations, including Bell Aircraft Corp.; Everett Research Lab; the Naval Air Rocket Test Station; and the Maynard Ordnance Test Station. In addition, he was an officer in several spaceflight organizations. These included President of the American Rocket Society, 1953; President of the International Astronautical Federation, 1953-1956 and Governor of the National Space Club in 1961. He later became the Director of Astronautics for the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, eventually becoming Assistant Director, where he was a significant leader in developing the museum and its art collection. He has co-authored two books on Chesley Bonestell with fellow Rudaux recipient Ron Miller.
2001
David A. Hardy, FIAAA
David A. Hardy was born in 1936. He first began working in Space Art in 1950 and illustrated his first book for Sir Patrick Moore in 1954. Many more collaborations with Moore would come over the years, the most recent being Futures: 50 Years in Space.
Other works were produced for books by Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Dr. Carl Sagan; along with numerous illustrations for science and science fiction magazines. He has written a number of non-fiction books for adults and children and a novel: Aurora; A Child of Two Worlds. Mr. Hardy has been an inspiration to many IAAA artists, some of whom are Rudaux Award recipients. He is a Fellow, past President and current European Vice-President of the IAAA. An asteroid has been named after him.
2002
Andrei Sokolov 1931-2007
Andrei Sokolov, who can be rightly called the dean of Russian Space Art, was an enormously prolific and influential artist. He was active for decades in promoting the recognition of Space Art both in his own country and abroad. Born in 1931, Sokolov studied art at the Moscow Architectural Institute and later became a member of the USSR Artist Union, where he was the chairman of the Cosmic Group. He held numerous exhibitions both in the former Soviet Union, Russia, and abroad, including the USA, Germany, Holland and Japan. His art work has been published in many American books and magazines, including Air & Space and in seven books of his own (some in collaboration with Alexei Leonov). He also co-authored In the Stream of Stars.
Dr. William K. Hartmann, FIAAA
Dr. William K. Hartmann, who is internationally known as a planetary scientist, an astronomical artist and a writer, discovered Space Art as a boy, through the articles, books and paintings of Chesley Bonestell. Born in 1939, his grandfather also being a painter, Bill produced his own first Space Art as a teenager. His publishing began in his thirties in articles and textbooks, as well as Ron Miller’s Space Art, for which he also wrote the foreword. He has co-authored and co-illustrated, with Miller, astronomy books The Grand Tour, Out of the Cradle, Cycles of Fire and In the Stream of Stars. Hartmann has also written and illustrated numerous articles, produced two college textbooks in multiple editions and several novels. He continues to direct his creativity towards more international collaboration in Space Art so as to promote more general awareness of exploration as a mutually shared human adventure.
2003
Don Davis, FIAAA
Donald E. Davis was born in 1952, and in 1968 began working for the US geological Survey’s branch of Astrogeological Studies. Here he created maps showing the Moon’s early development, and he has become an expert on impacts and cratering processes, producing many widely-used illustrations of these subjects. He has produced many book and magazine illustrations, including a series of books on the bodies of our Solar System for Facts on File. He worked at the Hansen Planetarium in Salt Lake City, and has moved from working in acrylics to digital art, including very advanced and highly realistic 3D work and animations.
A founding member and Fellow, Don has worked tirelessly for the IAAA for many years. He has attended a number of workshops, including the 1991 eclipse in Hawaii.
Ron Miller, FIAAA
Born in 1947, Ron Miller is a charter member of the IAAA, one of its first wave of IAAA Fellows, and has been a past member of its Board. He is co-author, with Bill Hartmann, of the well-known and acclaimed series of books: Grand Tour, Out of the Cradle, and Cycles of Fire. He also wrote Space Art (1978) and has co-authored two books on Chesley Bonestell with Frederick C. Durant III: Worlds Beyond: The Art of Chesley Bonestell andThe Art of Chesley Bonestell. He is currently producing a series of books, each on a separate planet or other solar system body. These are produced mainly using the computer program Terragen, as he has moved into ‘CGI’.
Ron has attended a number of IAAA workshops, including the original Death Valley and Iceland in 1988, and was active in the so-called Soviet-American exchanges, culminating in the production of In the Stream of Stars.
2004
Kim Poor, FIAAA
Kim was born in 1952. He became attracted to art through the early books by Chesley Bonestell and David A. Hardy’s Challange of the Stars. He was also greatly influenced by films that contained Bonestell’s work and television programs by Dr. Carl Sagan.
His’s first Space Art publications came in the April 1981 issue of Discover magazine and later contributed to Dr. Carl Sagan’s Cosmos TV series. Later in 1981 he produced a panorama for the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.
By 1982 he was rounding up like-minded artists which lead to the 1983 formation of the International Association of Astronomical Artists. With this seed group of founding members, he helped organize and participate in the first traveling IAAA exhibition, Other Worlds. A few years later, the IAAA Steering Committee elected him the first President of the IAAA. Kim introduced Pulsar as the association’s newsletter to keep members connected, informed and focused upon current events of the genre.
After the Johnson Space Center Workshop in 1987, Kim headed the American delegation to Moscow at the beginning of “Glasnost” and then to Iceland in the summer of 1988, which helped orchestrate the early IAAA-USSR interaction.
Kim initiated the first step to launch the IAAA onto a new direction, at the conclusion of the IAAA/USSR Iceland Workshop, by mandating the creation of a Board of Trustees to complete the transformation into a broadly based public educational and artistic non-profit corporation. Through this body, the IAAA negotiated a five year project involving the Cosmic Group of the USSR Union of Artists, the Planetary Society, the National Air and Space Museum, and the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center with a new IAAA traveling exhibition Art of the Cosmos.
Kim’s ambition included the wish to make Space Art a major art-form; and to help usher in that dream, he stepped down as president to launch his own company, NovaGraphics, to market fine art prints and posters. At the same time he created NovaSpace Gallery to further promote Space Art and artists of the genre.
2005
Alexei Leonov
Born in 1934, Leonov graduated from the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy with honors in 1957. After serving in the Air Force, he joined the cosmonauts’ group in 1960. In three space missions, he had accumulated a total of seven days in space. He was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and received the Order of Lenin. In 1965 as a true pioneer, space explorer/artist Alexei Leonov, was the co-pilot of Voskhod 2 and the first man to perform extra-vehicular activity (EVA), popularly known as to “walk in space”.
As a keen amateur artist, he later painted his own self-portrait floating in space. In July 1975, he was the commander pilot for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project where he presented the Apollo astronauts with a unique gift—a portrait of each of them as sketched by himself in space.
Leonov studied art at the Kharkov Higher School of Pilots and was a member of the USSR Artist Union and its Cosmic Group. He has been published in more than ten books, including children’s books. Often he has collaborated with his friend Andrei Sokolov, the first, Wait for US, Stars and then Man and the Universe.
He took part in several IAAA workshops, the Icelandic Space Art Workshop in the summer of 1988, the Senezh workshop outside Moscow in the Spring of 1989 and lead the cosmic Group later that Fall to join the IAAA Workshop in the Arches National Park in Moab Utah, and finally the Fall 1990 IAAA Crimea Workshop. Early in the spring of 1990 he joined the IAAA delegation at the opening of the year long IAAA Art of the Cosmos Exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.
Leonov is unique among the cosmonaut/artists in that he took a few colored pencils and paper into space with him in order to create the first eyewitness sketches of the Earth from space.
Leonov states: “Space exploration and work in space must serve the people of the whole world. I’ve been in space, I’ve seen it and feel obligated to share my vision of space with people by means of art I have at my disposal.”
2006
Michael W. Carroll, FIAAA
Michael Carroll was born in San Diego, California in 1955. He graduated from Colorado State University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree.
From about the mid 1970’s, he began to focus more and more upon painting astronomical scenes and writing about space exploration. The hook began after having been mesmerized by Patrick Moore’s and David A Hardy’s book Challenge of the Stars. As an artist, Carroll’s inspiration came from several directions intermixed with the likes of Corot, Monet, Salvador Dali, Bonestell, Edward Hopper and his father, an aerospace engineer.
His parents taught him a love of nature and, by extension, his passion for the cosmos which focused on the geology and exploration of planets in our solar system. Carroll’s paintings and articles have appeared in numerous magazines throughout the world, including Time, Omni, Smithsonian, Harper’s, Reader’s Digest, Astronomy, Sky & Telescope, Ad Astra and The Planetary Report.
His paintings have appeared on Nova, Cosmos and other TV specials. His artwork appears in several books, including Comet(1985), Beyond Spaceship Earth (1987), Mars 1999 and Race to Mars (1988), to specifically mention a few. In addition to writing science articles, Carroll has ventured to write children’s books. His versatility also produced 30 paintings for a major book, Vision of Revelation, which he co-authored with Jay E. Adams.
He is a founding member of the IAAA (1983) and the originator of the tradition of bringing orange food stuff–in this case circus peanuts–to the very first astronomical art workshop, which he organized.
In 1987, Carroll was one of seven American Space Artists invited to the Space Future Forum that marked the 30th Anniversary celebration of Sputnik I, where he participated with Soviet scientists and artists about upcoming missions to Mars.
He has continued to work diligently over the years to organize and encourage International cooperation between Russian, European and North American artists. In addition, he has participated in the NASA Fine Arts Program and, as a consequence, has given many lectures and classes relating to art and science, including presentations at the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater and Science Center, where he was a freelance artist and artist consultant.
2007
Ralph Andrew (R.A.) Smith 1905-1959
Ralph Andrew Smith, or R.A. Smith as he is more commonly known, was the defining vision for space hardware concepts coming from England, and was the primary artist for that great institution: the British Interplanetary Society. His paintings of space stations and moon ships stand out in their engineering savvy from most such visualizations of that era.
R.A. Smith passed on just two years after the first artificial Earth satellite had realized in hardware the ideas and drawings that he had worked on since before the War. He was second only to Chesley Bonestell in influencing the writer in publicizing the possibilities of spaceflight the 1950s; he illustrated several best-selling books by Arthur C. Clarke, including Interplanetary Flight, The Exploration of Space and The Exploration of the Moon. His work has also been collected by IAAA member Dr. Bob Parkinson in High Road to the Moon: From Imagination to Reality, published by the BIS in 1979, from which the following quote comes:
“The R.A.Smith pictures which form the basis of this book represent the most accurate visualizations of the concepts that they portray—at the time at which they were painted. The differences between them and later reality came about not through any failure of imagination, or artist’s license, but because of the progress of understanding and technology in the meanwhile.”
Smith painted only to commission, never for his own satisfaction, and rarely produced anything other than Space Art. His work for the UK publications: Picture Post and Illustrated and other European magazines were the equivalent of the US publications: Life and Colliers, and thus he was responsible for promoting a lot of interest in space travel, and space art, on his side of the Atlantic. He was, like Bonestell, an architect, but he was also an engineer, who designed satellites, the BIS ferry (shuttle) and lunar vehicles; a classic case of a fine artist teaming with experts in the field to create visions of what might be. His painting of a solar power station won an award by The Perspectivist magazine. He was thus a true first-generation space artist: his work was all his own. R.A. Smith is truly deserving of the IAAA Rudaux Award, which was presented to the British Interplanetary Society, who own the complete collection of some 140 paintings and drawings of his work.
2012
Rick Sternbach, FIAAA
Rick was one of the IAAA’s first three leaders, along with Kim Poor and David A. Hardy, and in later years, after the IAAA was established as a non-profit, served as an IAAA Trustee. He instigated and was editor of our original newsletter, Parallax, and returned to the Editor role of the updated IAAA newsletter, Pulsar. He also hosted the Death Valley III Workshop.
Rick was the senior illustrator/designer for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek: The Next Generation, the first two seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager. He was also the scenic artist for Star Trek: Nemesis.
Rick has received two Hugo Awards, has co-authored Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual and is the the author of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D Blueprints.
He is also a noted contributor to the usernet newsgroup sci.space.history, and is an accepted expert on the various paint schemes used on the Saturn V booster. His company, Space Model Systems, is a leading provider of accurate decals for model kits of the Saturn V, as well as the Apollo Command Module. He produces accurate 3D relief models of various topography features found on other planets, such as Mars Valles Marineris, derived from height data collected by orbiting spacecraft.
Throughout the years, Rick has worked tirelessly to promote the genre of Space and Astronomical Art and the IAAA organization.