Sun God: general view of sculpture and vine-covered arch with Faculty Club and eucalyptus grove in background

De Saint Phalle's Sun God was the first work commissioned by the Stuart Collection and was her first outdoor commission in America. The exuberantly colored, fourteen-foot bird is placed atop a fifteen-foot concrete arch and sited on a grassy area between the Faculty Club and Mandeville Auditorium.

"This was the first work in the Stuart Collection. Niki came with Jean Tinguely to look and talk about ideas. She came up with this large bird welcoming people to the campus. Students started the Sun God Festival the year after it was installed, 1984, and it has become the largest annual event on campus except graduations. The Sun God is made of fiberglass with a steel armature on the inside. The colors are acrylic resin and the crown is gold leaf. Students say that to get an A on an exam one must walk backwards through the A-shaped arch." - Mary Beebe, Stuart Collection Director

• 1983

• Stuart Collection (San Diego, Calif.)

• Cohen, Becky (American photographer, contemporary)

• Saint-Phalle, Niki de (French sculptor, writer, and scenographer, 1930-2002)

• Beebe, Mary Livingstone (American, born 1940)

Mandeville Center: University of California, San Diego; La Jolla, California, United States

mixed media; concrete; fiberglass; gilding; gold leaf; acrylic paint; 14 feet (height)

• Architecture (object genre)
• Caricatures
• Installations (visual works)
• Landscape architecture
• Public art
• Sculpture (visual work)
• Site-specific works

• University of California, San Diego--History

• American
• Arches
• Birds
• Color
• Colossi
• Contemporary
• Crowns (headdresses)
• Deities
• Gilding
• Humor
• Vines
• Women artists

Point: 32.878565, -117.239716

• image

Architecture and City Planning

Garden and Landscape

Sculpture and Installations

• Cohen, Becky (American photographer, contemporary)

Under copyright (US)

Use: This work is available from the UC San Diego Library. This digital copy of the work is intended to support research, teaching, and private study.

Constraint(s) on Use: This work is protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.). Use of this work beyond that allowed by "fair use" requires written permission of the UC Regents. Responsibility for obtaining permissions and any use and distribution of this work rests exclusively with the user and not the UC San Diego Library. Inquiries can be made to the UC San Diego Library program having custody of the work.

UC San Diego Library, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0175 (https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/contact)

2021-10-08