Joy Ride

Joy Ride is a sculpture created by Franta Belsky between 1958 and 1959. It features a bronze mother and child on a circular stone plinth, with the mother carrying her little boy on her back. The design of the mother figure is notable for the way her dress and skin are integrated into a single, tensile form.

Franta Belsky, who was born in 1921, came to Britain from Bmo, Czechoslovakia, in 1938. He studied at the Royal College of Art while also serving in the military. Although he is recognized for both his portrait work and public sculptures, it was with Joy Ride and an earlier piece called Lesson, created in 1956, that he reached artistic maturity. Belsky was commissioned by the Stevenage Development Corporation to create a symbolic piece for the newly established New Town, inspired by the use of symbolic sculpture in the reconstruction of bombed Rotterdam. The figures represent the arrival of a new generation in this New Town.

The sculpture's vertical composition, with a high center of interest, is designed to fit its location atop a platform flanked by stairs and railings, overlooking a carefully preserved group of trees below. Joy Ride is considered one of Belsky's most distinctive works, specifically crafted for this prominent setting.