Sun God: general view of sculpture with arch and vines

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.)

• Rittermann, Philipp Scholz (American photographer, 1955 CE-)

• 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

• No linguistic content; Not applicable

Architecture and City Planning

Garden and Landscape

Sculpture and Installations

• Rittermann, Philipp Scholz (American photographer, 1955 CE-)

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2022-10-28