Richard Lippold
Lippold working on a sculpture, circa 1950
Born	(1915-05-03)May 3, 1915 Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Died	August 22, 2002(2002-08-22) (aged 87) Locust Valley, New York
Nationality	American
Known for	Sculpture

Richard Lippold (May 3, 1915 – August 22, 2002) was an American sculptor, known for his geometric constructions using wire as a medium.

Life

Lippold was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He studied at the University of Chicago, and graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in industrial design in 1937.^[1] Lippold worked as an industrial designer from 1937 to 1941. After he became a sculptor, Lippold taught at several universities, including Hunter College at the City University of New York, from 1952 to 1967.

When describing Lippold's floor-to-ceiling sculpture "Trinity", the American artist Howard Newman said:

Lippold was an engineering genius, but we've been dealing with a piece that had reached the threshold of catastrophe,...People's mouths fall open when they see it going back up, like they're watching a spider spin a web of blazing gold,...The more that goes up, the more exquisite it gets.^[2]

The 14th and 15th of John Cage's famous Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano are subtitled Gemini – after the work of Richard Lippold.

Works

• 1949–50, Variation Number 7: Full Moon, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City^[3][4][5]
• 1950, World Tree, in Harvard Graduate Center at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Walter Gropius, designer^[6]
• 1950–51, Aerial Act, at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut
• 1953–56, Variation within a Sphere, Number 10: The Sun, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, which includes more than two miles of gold wire; first commissioned work by this museum.^[7]
• 1958–60, Trinity, Chapel of Portsmouth Abbey School, Portsmouth, RI. Pietro Belluschi, building architect.
• 1958, Radiant I, at the Inland Steel Building in Chicago, IL. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, building architects^[8]
• 1959, Untitled, The Four Seasons, and Seagram Building Construction No. 1, at the Four Seasons Restaurant, Seagram Building, New York City. Philip Johnson, Mies Van der Rohe building architects.
• 1959, Great Lone Star, at the Longview National Bank, Longview, TX.^[9]
• 1959, Spirit Vine (label art), The Museum of Wine in Art, Château Mouton Rothschild, Pauillac, France.^[10][11]
• 1961, Homage to Our Age, Reception Area, J. Walter Thompson, New York City.
• 1962, Orpheus and Apollo, at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City, with architect Max Abramovitz^[12] Orpheus and Apollo has been reinstalled at LaGuardia Airport as per NY Times 10/14/2023.
• 1963, Flight, PanAm Building, New York, NY, with architects Emery Roth, Pietro Belluschi, Walter Gropius.
• 1966, Gemini II, at Jones Hall, Houston, TX. William Wayne Caudill, building architect.
• 1967–70, Baldacchino, St. Mary's Cathedral, San Francisco, CA. Pietro Belluschi, building architect.
• 1970, Homage to North Carolina, at North Carolina National Bank, Charlotte, North Carolina,^[13]
• 1970, Youth, Fine Arts Museum of the South, Mobile, Alabama.
• 1975, Flora Raris, Hyatt Regency Atlanta
• 1975, Homage to H.I.H. the Late King Faisal, InterContinental Hotel Conference Center, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia^{[14][15][16][17]}
• 1976, Ad Astra, at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. Gyo Obata, building architect.
• 1977, Untitled, Grand Court, Columbia Mall, Columbia, South Carolina
• 1977, In Skyspace, Kish International Airport, Kish Island, Iran
• 1980, Wings of Welcome at the Hyatt Regency, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Py-Vavra, building architect.
• 1981, Winged Gamma, for Park Avenue Atrium Building, New York with office of Edward Durell Stone
• 1984, Untitled, One Financial Center, Boston
• 1985, Primal Energy, Sohio Headquarters, Cleveland, Ohio
• 1985, Counterpoint with Architecture, Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt, Germany
• 1986, Fire Bird at the Orange County Performing Art Center, Costa Mesa, California. Cesar Pelli, building architect.
• 1986, Copper Crystal, Crystal Park II Building, Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia
• 1986, Homage to South Korea, Dae-Han Building, Seoul, Korea
• 1986, Orchidea, Marina Mandarin Hotel, Singapore
• 1988, Ex Stasis, Haggerty Museum, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Kahler Slater, building architect.
• 1988, Encounter at Fairlane Town Center, Dearborn, Michigan (de-installed pending conservation)^[18][19]

Group exhibitions

• Origins of Modern Sculpture, 1945^[20][21] Organized by Wilhelm Valentiner^[22]
  • Detroit Institute of Arts, January 22, 1946, to March 3, 1946
  • City Art Museum of Saint Louis, March 30, 1946, to May 1, 1946

Solo exhibitions

• Willard Gallery 1947,^[20] 1948,1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1961, 1968, 1973
• Arts Club of Chicago, Richard Lippold Sculpture, 1954
• Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art, Richard Lippold: Sculpture, 1990–91

Publications

• Notes in Passing, by Richard Lippold, Arts & Architecture, August 1947.
• Before Band Wagons, Allene Talmey, Vogue Magazine. August 15, 1949, p. 133.
• Craft Horizons, June 1952.
• Four Artists in a Mansion, Harpers Bazaar, July 1952.
• French Vogue, May 1955.
• Lippold Makes a Construction, by Lawerence Campbell, Art News, Oct. 1956.
• Eye on the Sun, Vogue, February 1, 1958.
• Profiles: A Thing Among Things, Calvin Tompkins, New Yorker, March 1963.
• Synergizing Space, Sculpture, Architecture and Richard Lippold at Lincoln Center, Marin R. Sullivan, American Art, Summer 2019.