In 1968, Robert Rauschenberg bought property on Captiva Island. Two years later, he made it his permanent home. Bob Rauschenberg Gallery Director Jade Dellinger says it was a move written in the stars.
“He visits this Zoltan Mason,” Dellinger noted. “Mason tells him that you need to avoid the mountains after getting his astrology chart made. Avoid the mountains and find a coastal location to make your home.”
At the time, Zoltan Mason was the astrologer to the stars. He’d translated and written the forward for the book on modern astrology.
Mason’s advice resonated with the great American artist. He’d spent several weeks on Treasure Island in the fall of 1960 completing his illustrations for Dante’s “Inferno.”
“He found this little fisherman's wharf. Supposedly it was about to be knocked down. He convinced the owner to let him stay there for a number of months and he would pay him very little rent. But during that time, between '58 and '60, he managed to illustrate Dante.”
Around the time Mason prepared his birth chart, Rauschenberg took a drive with a collector in her white Jaguar sports car.
“Bob traded a painting for this automobile, which became his escape from Manhattan and also the car that he drove as he made the stops down the coast and eventually found his way to Captiva,” Dellinger recounted.
Dellinger says Rauschenberg stopped at virtually every beach exit on his drive down Florida’s west coast. But Captiva spoke to him in an almost primordial way.
“Bob always identified with and or believed that he was part Cherokee,” Dellinger noted. “As he came down the west coast of Florida, and particularly when he got to Captiva … there is this history that he became palpably aware of. He felt the presence of this kind of energy that had to do with both the Tocabaga and the Calusa Indians.”
A couple of naturalistic events reinforced the connection Rauschenberg immediately felt for Captiva.
“He talked about getting out of a car and being surrounded by a ball of butterflies or having to stop because there was a tortoise crossing the road and helping it along its way,” Dellinger said.
Rauschenberg paid homage to Zoltan Mason and the role he played in bringing him to Captiva.
“He would acknowledge it later in one of his most famous works of art, an editioned print called ‘Booster’ that he did with Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles. The background of a full-bodied X-ray of Rauschenberg as a self-portrait is that star chart from Zoltan Mason.”
While his purchase of Ding Darling’s bungalow may have been written in the stars, Rauschenberg also credited his time in Treasure Island, adding often that he’d passed through hell — having spent time illustrating Dante's Inferno — to land in paradise.
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Rauschenberg’s Captiva Compound
Today, the Rauschenberg compound on Captiva comprises a number of buildings.
Rauschenberg’s first property on Captiva was the Beach House, which he purchased on July 26, 1968, along with undeveloped property he called the “Jungle.” The Beach House served as his studio on Captiva until 1990. His first worktable there was a door propped up on four sawhorses. Rauschenberg purchased the Jungle to prevent its development. It was zoned at the time for the construction of 18 homes.
In 1971, Rauschenberg added two homes to his estate. He purchased them from a widow by the name of Anna Lowe. The first (which was originally built in 1958) became known as the Print House. That’s where Rauschenberg and well-known printer Robert Peterson set up shop, creating their own work as well as prints for visiting artists such as Cy Twombly, David Bradshaw, Robert Whitman and Susan Weil.
Rauschenberg called the second home (a Cracker style residence that dates back to the late 1930s) the Curator House because he and Peterson would take their completed prints there as a staging area for sales and exhibitions.
Rauschenberg acquired the Laike Lane Studio in 1973 and used the ground floor of the 1955 house for fabrication of wood and metal sculptures and frames for his paintings and prints. The upper floor became his administrative offices and additional studio space, where he’d roller skate around large worktables as he flitted between projects in various stages of completion.
The Weeks House, located on four acres extending from the Gulf to Pine Island Sound along the South Seas Resort property line, was added to the estate in 1977.
Rauschenberg used it primarily as a guest house until it fell into disrepair.
The Waldo Cottage came next, followed by the Fish House and the Bay House.
Rauschenberg purchased the Fish House, the Bay House and 3.5 acres of land from Joseph Van Vleck, Jr. on December 29, 1978. The property was previously owned by J.N. “Ding” Darling, a well-known political cartoonist and conservationist long before the latter term entered our everyday lexicon. In 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tapped Darling to head the U.S. Biological Survey (the forerunner of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). Two years later, Darling organized and was elected president of the National Wildlife Federation. His quick action to preserve a portion of land on Sanibel led to it being named the J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge.
Herself a conservationist, Mina Edison became Darling’s friend and ardent supporter during this time as well.
Darling purchased the land on Captiva from Clarence Chadwick in the late 1930s and in May of 1942, built his beloved Fish House. The dock was built with a counterbalanced drawbridge that he would pull up behind himself to work uninterrupted at his drawing desk. When he was forced to sell the property, he entrusted its preservation to Van Vleck, who in turn entrusted it to Rauschenberg. Rauschenberg, like Darling, found the Fish House to be a sanctuary, pulling up the drawbridge to be secluded.
The drawbridge no longer exists, but residency artists still use the house as a space for focused work, quiet reflection, and observation of the beautiful natural environment.
After securing permission from the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation, the Nature Conservancy and the National Audubon Society, Rauschenberg moved the Bay House to its current location, where, renovated, it now stands on pilings. Rauschenberg used this property as guest and workers quarters, as well as for storage of materials he used in his sculptures and other three-dimensional artworks.
There was also the Main House, which Rauschenberg built in 1990 and occupied as his primary residence until his death in 2008. Rauschenberg willed this property to his friend and partner Darryl Pottorf, who sold it in 2020 for $4.25 million. Pottorf had assisted in the building’s design. Among the home’s many extraordinary features were a Brazilian wood staircase entry, a private elevator and a spiral staircase that leads to a rooftop sun deck.
The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation has listed the property for sale. For more on this, read, "End of an era: Rauschenberg Foundation selling artist's Captiva compound."
https://www.wgcu.org/top-story/2025-09-09/end-of-an-era-rauschenberg-foundation-selling-artists-captiva-compound.
Zoltan Mason
Zoltan Mason was a force in the field of astrology in the 1960s. He had many prominent clients, among them Robert Rauschenberg.
He was actually born Zoltan Schnitzer in the town of Velka Bytca in Austro-Hungary, now Slovakia. His father was German. His mother was Austro-Hungarian. Born on Jan. 18, 1906, Zoltan was the middle child of three children.
Schnitzer received a classical education that included studies in Latin. He attended Charles University in Prague from 1924 through 1928, where he studied medicine with the intention of becoming a psychiatrist. However, a severe thyroid problem forced him to abandon his studies.
Seeking to understand the cause and treatment for his illness, he discovered astrology. It became his avocation and lifelong love affair.
He worked at the French Consulate in Galatz, Romania, from 1929 until the outbreak of World War II in 1939 and remained in Galatz during the war. During this time, astrology remained an interest, although more as a hobby. But in 1945 he moved to Bucharest to practice and teach astrology full time. However, he discovered that his practice was impeded by Romania’s characteristic failure to record birth times on its birth certificates. So, in 1948, he immigrated to the United States.
Schnitzer settled in New York City. Recognizing that German surnames were problematic in the years following the end of World War II, he took on the name of Mason and opened Mason's Bookshop in 1950 at 789 Lexington Ave. between 61st and 62nd streets near Bloomingdale’s.
Mason's Bookshop became internationally known for its metaphysical books, new and rare. Zoltan amassed an extensive private collection of astrological and metaphysical books, which he augmented through yearly book-buying trips to Europe. And he also began giving private astrology consultations and readings, as well as teaching astrology classes on Monday and Tuesday evenings and Saturday mornings.
His work was uncannily accurate. As word spread, he gained numerous affluent and celebrity clients. His reputation was enhanced by the fact that a number of his students also went on to become successful astrologers as well.
As his fame grew, Mason was invited to appear on radio and television shows, both in the United States and Canada. He also wrote a chapter for the revised edition of "The Coffee Table Book of Astrology," by John Lynch (Viking Press - 1967).
Mason was a strong advocate of Jean-Baptiste Morin de Villefranche's system of astrology. He had one of his students translate the 21st Book of Morin's Astrologia Gallica from the original French. He then edited and published the translation under the title "Astrosynthesis" in 1974. It became the bible of astrological thinking and practice.
Mason closed his bookstore in 1986 but continued to interpret horoscopes well into his late 80s when he finally retired.
He died on July 14, 2002.
[You can watch Zoltan Mason give an astrology reading on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rg6GdelM3M.]
Comparison of Mason’s Astrology to Cherokee Beliefs
According to Mason, astrology operates from two symbiotic principles. The first is the universe is cyclical, as opposed to Western philosophy’s linear perspective with finite beginnings and endings. The second is the hypothesis that there exists an underlying interdependence that weaves together the threads of the cosmos, life, breath, energy and the very tapestries of each human life. The interplay of these universal cycles and interdependencies enables astrologers to derive analogies and correspondences that can guide personal, professional and financial decisions.
These principles align somewhat with Cherokee belief.
An essential aspect of Cherokee religion is the belief that everything on Earth is the reflection of a star. This includes not only people and animals but also trees, rivers, stones, and mountains — all sentient beings to the Cherokee.
Astrology has always played a strong role in the Cherokee tradition because of this belief, but unlike Western system of astrology, which is based on the solar calendar of 365 days, Cherokee astrology is based on a 260-day Venus calendar, which includes 20 individual day signs and 13 numbers. It was the task of the Cherokee daykeeper to coordinate this calendar with those of the sun and the moon to determine the most auspicious times for ceremonies as well as to understand the star wisdom carried back to Earth by each newborn child. The day sign of a child explains his or her strengths and weaknesses; the number explains the individual’s role in the great cosmic scheme.
Given his belief that he was part Cherokee, it makes sense that Rauschenberg would seek his own wisdom in the stars a’ la Zoltan Mason.
34 Illustrations for Dante’s “Inferno”
Poet Dante Alighieri’s medieval epic “Divine Comedy” (“Divina Commedia” c. 1307–21) consists of 34 cantos of the Inferno. In 1958, Robert Rauschenberg began illustrating these cantos.
Working from John Ciardi’s translation of the poem in tandem with friend and Dante scholar Michael Sonnabend, Rauschenberg developed one composition for each of the 34 cantos. It would take him two years to complete the project.
From an artistic vantage, the illustrations were revolutionary not only because of Rauschenberg’s process, but also because of their content.
To make each illustration, Rauschenberg culled images from popular contemporary sources, soaked them with lighter fluid (which acted as a solvent), and rubbed them face down with an empty ball point pen onto paper, later adding touches of pencil, crayon, watercolor wash, and gouache. As a result, Dante, his guide and companion in the underworld, the ancient Roman poet Virgil, and the beings they encounter throughout the course of their journey are presented in the guise of contemporary figures ranging from athletes, astronauts and politicians such as Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy.
“Among the magazines he took images from was ‘Sports Illustrated,’ so that’s why Dante and Virgil appear as Olympic athletes,” Dellinger explained. “And the Mercury mission NASA astronauts became the sinners.”
"The role of the artist is to see what is in the world today," Rauschenberg later reflected.
“I think a picture is more like the real world when it’s made out of the real world,” he also postulated.
Although controversial, the illustrations were an unqualified artistic success. In 1963, the series was among the first of Rauschenberg’s works to be acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, where it remains a treasured icon in the MoMA collection.
Not only did Rauschenberg introduce his transfer solvent process with this series, it was the first time an artist had combined found objects and photographic imagery from newspapers and other popular sources to create a work of art.
Each of the 34 illustrations can be viewed at https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/art/galleries/series/dante-drawings-1958-60.
Further Rationale for the Move to Captiva
Perhaps Rauschenberg transferred the success he enjoyed with the Dante’s “Inferno” project to his memories of Treasure Island. But more likely, he undoubtedly recalled the walks on the beach, smell of the salt air and the obscurity he enjoyed there with a fair degree of nostalgia as his fame grew in the years following his win at the Venice Biennale in 1964.
“By the mid-'60s, he was having some difficulty in sort of figuring out how to deal with celebrity and how to deal with the notoriety that had come to him for having won the Venice Biennale,” Dellinger observed.
It wasn’t just that Rauschenberg was the first American to win the Grand Prize in Painting at the Venice Biennale. Foreign critics decried his art as “rubbish” and rumors swirled that the U.S. State Department has rigged the jury. [This fascinating story is the subject of a 2024 documentary titled “Taking Venice” that will be screened on Nov. 11 at the Alliance for the Arts. View trailer here.]
So Mason’s advice to find a place on an island dovetailed with Rauschenberg’s desire to get out of Dodge, or at least Manhattan.
“His partner during this period teased him that Manhattan's an island,” Dellinger said, laughing. “You're surrounded by water." But Mason meant the beaches and the coastal area. So Bob took off for Florida.
“The Gulf of Mexico was much like Port Arthur [where Rauschenberg was born and raised] in terms of just that sense of being on that body of water,” Dellinger observed. “Better still, Captiva provides him the isolation that he needed at the time. There wasn't even a bridge to the island. You had to take the ferry to get to there.”
In addition to the peace, tranquility and isolation he enjoyed on Captiva, Rauschenberg also “felt deeply connected to the Native American presence that was a powerful force in his life there on Captiva,” Dellinger noted.
Dating as far back as 2,500 years, the Calusa were the first-known residents of Captiva Island. The Calusa skillfully transformed the waterways around the island into abundant riches of food and tools. Whelks, conchs, clams, oysters, and other sea life were used for food, and their empty shells were crafted into tools. The Calusa proved to be skilled builders and craftsmen, perching their huts high atop shell mounds to provide protection from storm tides. Some of their shell mounds, which were also used for ceremonial, ritual and burial sites, remain intact today. However, many were used by European settlers as road building material.
“Those shell roads played a part in his decision to settle on Captiva,” Dellinger said.
The Escape Vehicle – That White Jaguar
As mentioned, Rauschenberg traded one of his paintings for a collector's snazzy white Jaguar.
“One of Bob’s Manhattan collectors had recently acquired a white Jaguar sports car,” Dellinger said. “She took Bob for a ride in it. At the time, she was interested in acquiring more of Rauschenberg's work. This was an extraordinary moment in terms of his sales and collectors’ interest in buying his work. So Bob turned to her, having fallen in love with her car, and said he would be interested in the car. Could he trade her his painting for the car?”
The swap makes sense once you know that Rauschenberg’s friend and mentor, Willem de Kooning, had traded a painting for a house in the Hamptons. It was de Kooning who famously gave Rauschenberg (over a bottle of Jack Daniels) one of his drawings to erase in 1953.
“And so, Bob traded a painting for this automobile which provided his escape from Manhattan,” said Dellinger.
Booster
Rauschenberg incorporated his birth chart into a print he made in 1967 that he titled “Booster.” It sits alongside six X-rays of Rauschenberg’s skeleton in an ersatz self-portrait of the man and his beliefs which he dubbed “a self-portrait of inner man.”
When it was made in 1967, “Booster” was the largest hand-printed lithograph ever produced. It measures nearly 6 feet in length. To produce the X-rays, Sidney Felsen at Gemini G.E.L. had to find someone willing and capable of X-raying Rauschenberg. Then they discovered that no one made printing stones big enough, so they ended up having to join two stones together. Felsen also found it necessary to have his printers work in shifts just so they could keep up with Rauschenberg, who customarily worked deep into the night when he was on a tear.
“Booster” became a phenomenal success. “Booster” is regarded as the catalyst that catapulted printing into a new era of experimentation. With its gravitas and staggering presence, “Booster” was a print with the impact to challenge the pre-eminence of painting as a medium. Rauschenberg’s radical reinterpretation of what constitutes a print made “Booster” into one of the most complex and demanding works to ever be editioned.
Each of the 38 prints in the edition sold in 1967 for $1,000.
While much attention was lavished on Rauschenberg’s use of X-rays and other found objects, few focused on the significance of his inclusion of his birth chart in the print. Several years ago, one print sold at auction for $250,000. Today, copies reside in the National Gallery of Art in Los Angeles as well as the National Gallery of Art in Australia.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
