Helmut Wimmer, Painter With Planetarium For A Canvas, 80
DGH
Helmut Wimmer, 80, Painter With Planetarium for a Canvas, Dies
By DENNIS HEVESI
Helmut K. Wimmer, whose vivid depictions of twirling planets, glowing
comets, pulsing nebulas and space-bending black holes awed thousands of
visitors craning their necks under the dome of the old Hayden
Planetarium for more than 30 years, died on March 20, 2006, near his
home in Stuart, Florida. He was 80.
Officials at the planetarium and its parent institution, the American
Museum of Natural History, said they had not been told of Mr.
Wimmer's death until last week. News of his death was published only
as paid death notices in papers in Florida.
Mr. Wimmer was the planetarium's staff artist from 1954 to 1987,
primarily during its predigital days and before the 90-foot-high glass
cube of the Rose Center for Earth and Space, with its new planetarium,
opened in 2000.
Working in a basement studio with an airbrush, and sometimes adding
pebbles for three-dimensional effects, Mr. Wimmer produced hundreds of
paintings on cardboard sheets. His finely etched paintings were then
transferred onto high-resolution slides. Inserted into as many as 200
projectors on the perimeter of the planetarium's 48-foot-high dome,
or into the tentacled, insectlike Zeiss projector standing in the
middle, Mr. Wimmer's images wove seamless panoramas of cosmic vistas.
For a Martian landscape, Mr. Wimmer ringed the lower edge of the dome,
like a horizon, so the viewer seemed to be standing on the planet's
surface. He glued rocks and sand to the cardboard, then drew shadows on
the landscape, precisely indicating where the Sun's rays should be
cast by the Zeiss projector.
"Without his art," said Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of the
Hayden Planetarium and an astrophysicist with the museum, "your
planetarium experience would be limited to pointing out the stars of
the night sky. His artwork allowed generations of visitors to transport
themselves from Earth to the surface of a star, the lunar landscape,
the vicinity of a black hole."
Dr. Tyson called Mr. Wimmer, who never went to college, "a
scientifically literate artist."
"For whatever he would draw, he would read the latest research, take
data from telescopes and space probes and capture it as accurately as
possible," Dr. Tyson said.
Helmut Karl Wimmer was born in Munich [Germany] on December 8, 1925. At
14, he was hired as an apprentice to a sculptor and model maker. Three
years later, he was drafted into the German army. In the closing days
of the war, Mr. Wimmer was captured by Czech partisans who turned him
over to the Russians. In 1949, after four years as a laborer in a
Russian lumber camp, he returned to Munich. There he was reunited with
his childhood sweetheart, Francie Schwaiger. They were married in 1951
and moved to the United States in 1954.
Besides his wife, Mr. Wimmer is survived by two daughters, Monica
Hertel of Sparta, New Jersey, and Regina Cheetham of Jersey [New
Jersey] Shore, Pennsylvania; and three grandchildren.
In 1974, Mr. Wimmer painted an early image of a black hole. It was used
as a cover for The New York Times Magazine and in numerous scientific
publications. The work was based on calculations of what a black hole
would do to its environment, showing the curvature of space and
material being pulled in from a nearby giant red star.
Another of Mr. Wimmer's well-known works offers a panorama of the
solar system from the perspective of a viewer floating beyond Saturn,
looking back toward the Sun and the Earth. He also produced artwork for
the planetarium's popular holiday show, "The Star of Christmas,"
which recreated the sky above Bethlehem more than 2,000 years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/obituaries/25wimmer.html?ref=obituaries