Artwork
Aero Nix
Artist
Charles A.A. Dellschau
(American, born Prussia, 1830 - 1923)
DepartmentAmerican Art
DateJuly 28-30, 1912
Dimensions16 1/8 x 19 5/8 in. (41 x 49.8 cm)
Credit LinePurchased with funds provided by The Annual Gift Appeal
Object number79.20.180
DescriptionDrawing and collage on two sides of a paper support that includes handwritten text and newspaper clippings. The compositions feature designs for a vehicle embellished with striped motifs on a blue ground. The images are surrounded by a striped border with text and numerals.Label TextRenaissance paintings show saints and angels floating or flying around amid clouds in the same skies where Dellschau’s angelic Aeros are suspended light as a feather.
–Thomas McEvilley (American, 1939–2013), critic, poet, novelist, and scholar
Between 1908 and 1921, Charles Dellschau—a German immigrant, retired butcher, and supposed former Sonora Aero Club member—created twelve large, hand-bound books with more than 2,500 drawings related to airships and the development of flight. Stored in the attic of a family home in Houston, Texas, these fascinating works were not discovered until the 1960s, when they were dumped on a sidewalk and salvaged by a junk dealer, after miraculously surviving a fire. While it has never been proven that the Sonora Aero Club existed in Sonora, California, during the Gold Rush (1848–1855), it is clear that this artist possessed a great imagination. Dellschau’s collages document the men and the machines they dreamed up at secretive club meetings dedicated to the discussion of flight exploration, a new frontier during the period when Dellschau created these works. However, his fantasies were not unhinged from reality; they were layered on top of it. Dellschau’s detailed, annotated mixed-media images of heroic flying machines—Barnum & Bailey, Buck Rogers, and Jules Verne all stirred together—are interspersed with collaged pages (which the artist referred to as “press blooms”) featuring thousands of newspaper clippings related to the political events and technological advances of the period.
(Suzanne Weaver, 2019, Group Label)
InscriptionsRecto:
Left side: Houston Texas
Right side: July 28 1912
Center: Wing Balance Fall Easey No Flopper
Lower left: Aero Nix.
Lower center: 1
Lower right: DM=XØ Robert Nixons Idea Free - 1858 - Long Bobs - PLATE - 2607 -
Verso:
Left side: Houston Texas
Right side: July 30 1912
Lower left: Aero. Nix...
Lower center: 26208
Lower right: Robert Nixons Idea Trying to make a Life safe Masrine (?). Arews (?) the whole Security on the Gliders A A. What a Mistacke. -Not on view
Collections
The San Antonio Museum of Art is in the process of digitizing its permanent collection. This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect SAMA's complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of such records is ongoing.
This resource has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor.
