Artwork
Aero Goosey
Artist
Charles A.A. Dellschau
(American, born Prussia, 1830 - 1923)
DepartmentAmerican Art
DateMarch 27, 1910
Dimensions16 5/8 x 19 in. (42.2 x 48.3 cm)
Credit LinePurchased with funds provided by the Annual Gift Appeal
Object number79.20.311
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. One side features two vehicles side-by-side separated by a decorative border. 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)
Exhibition HistoryFlight or Fancy? The Secret Life of C.A.A. Dellschau,San Antonio Museum of Art, Focus Gallery, 2002InscriptionsRecto:
Upper left: 2107
Upper center: DM=XØ
Upper right: Front
Lower left: Houston Texas... A Jocke
Lower center: 1
Lower center: ... Aero Wont Goe ... George Newell PROPOSER
Lower right: ...drawn by C.A.A. Dellschau.
Verso:
Left side: Houston Texas
Upper center: DM=XØ
Right side: March 27 1920
Lower left: Goosey comming down
Lower center: 2200
Lower right: Goosey at Rest drawn by C. A. A. DellschauNot 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.
