George Rickey: Sculpture from the Estate

George Rickey SCULPTURE FROM THE ESTATE

Cover: Wild Carrot II, 1987, stainless steel and lead, unique, 80 x 39.4 x 39.4 cm.

21 APRIL–20 MAY 2017

George Rickey (1907–2002) SCULPTURE FROM THE ESTATE

Marlborough Fine Art 6 Albemarle Street London W1S 4BY + 44 (0)20 7629 5161 reception@marlboroughfineart.com www.marlboroughlondon.com

Portrait of the artist

by TGL Williamstown.

George Rickey is among the most inventive and influential sculptors of the twentieth century. His iconic kinetic works grew out of experiments with wire and metal that began during his service in World War II. By the late 1950s and 1960s he reduced sculptural forms to simple, geometric shapes such as rectangles, trapezoids, cubes, and lines. Rickey, along with Alexander Calder, introduced the notion of kinetic sculpture (sculpture capable of motion) to America in the mid-twentieth century. Rickey became famous for his burnished and polished stainless steel sculptures of geometric forms and especially for his monumental public works, all of which respond to the action of air currents.

This exhibition includes works from the private holdings of the George Rickey Estate and have never been shown in London before. During his career George Rickey kept certain works in his own archive — some of which are offered for sale for the first time.

George Rickey’s essay The Métier was first published in The Art Digest’s 1965 edition of Contemporary Sculpture: Arts Yearbook, and is as fresh and informative today as it was 52 years ago. The Métier was selected for this catalogue because it addresses first-hand so many of the vital art issues of Rickey’s time, most of which have carried forward to the present.

We would like to thank Dale Lanzone, Art Advisor and Logistics, Marlborough Gallery Inc, New York, for all his help with curating this exhibition.

Thanks are also due to George’s son Philip Rickey, representing the Artist’s Estate, for kindly adapting the essay he wrote in 2004 to accompany the sale of part of his parent’s art collection when sold at Hauswedell and Nolte, Hamburg Germany.

George Rickey: Reflections on His Collection and His Art

Because of the very personal relationship my father had with many of the works exhibited here, I have been asked to offer some historical reflections on his work, our home, and his methods. Many of these works are unique and are first examples of discoveries that led to new works. As such, my father kept these sculptures close at home and in his studio where he could refer to them for technical, esthetic, and inspirational purposes — never offering them for sale.

Growing up in rural upstate New York, our house was always filled with art made by my father, as well as by other artists, both friends and colleagues whose “presence” my parents wanted to have around.

Family stories at the dining room table were told under my father’s sculpture Nuages Variation VI, 1966–68, a work of “so many elements they can’t be counted,” which wavered gently above from the candle’s heat. Such conversations revolved around the collection on the surrounding walls and new work that Pa had just brought in to show my mother and our friends.

The artwork in the house did not directly influence my father in the studio although there were certainly a few exceptions; these included a group of Japanese prints, a series of calligraphic works by his closest friend, Ulfert Wilke, and a small painting

by Mark Tobey entitled Ancient Empires.

The calligraphic markmaking of Ulfert’s works from the mid–1950s onwards and the intense compositions of Tobey’s work emphasized light and dark, and the importance of the spaces in-between.

Though not directly influential, these works suggest and perhaps

inspired a parallel development in sculptures my father started making in the late 1950s, 1960s, and throughout the end of his career. These works were inspired by the natural world and contained painted or shiny elements, constructed with rotors in stacked configurations like Wild Carrot, 1987 (Cat. No. 7) and Nebula III, 1989 (Cat. No. 14), and in horizontal groupings of many small, undulating elements like the Nuages above the dining table.

Rickey also used multiple elements to create in line sculptures like Tidal III, 1961 (Cat. No. 11), Two Broken Lines Horizontal, 1968 (Cat. No. 8) and Seascape III, 1993 (Cat. No. 2).

A group of Japanese prints acquired in 1935 and 1954 intrigued my father and later influenced a whole series of works: the sliver of a view through an open door or window, the narrow rectangle being repeated and revealing a world beyond.

Kunisada’s early nineteenth-century Invasion of a House was the impetus for the series of “open rectangle” sculptures, which he subsequently developed further to include triangles and trapezoids interacting in marvelous ways when stirred by a breeze. These were followed by other geometric forms, Squeezed Squares — Wall, 1995 (Cat. No. 10) and the Annular Eclipse series created in the late 1990s. As with the other “open” works, including Annular Eclipse Wall Variation V, 1999 (Cat. No. 9), my father was interested in what was seen in and through the moving frame, and in the expanding and contracting arcs created as the circles encounter each other. The inspiration for the Annular Eclipse configuration came from George watching a lunar eclipse one night in the garden of his home in East Chatham.

Nuages Variation VI 1966–68.

Photograph

by David Lee.

Philip Rickey, Saint Paul 2 February 2017

Column of Eight Triangles with Spirals, 1973 (Cat. No. 16) is such a work, plated in gold to make it more visible and reflective than the ubiquitous stainless steel.

In the early 1990s, my father developed carpal tunnel syndrome in his left hand, the hand he used for all mechanical skills (for writing and detail work he used his right).

Untitled by Ulfert Wilke, c.1964; Portrait of Edie Rickey with Eye-Patch, by Irma Cavat, c.1992.

Photograph

by David Lee.

Movement was the essential part of my father’s practice. Pushed by the breeze, the components of the Four Lines Oblique Gyratory — Tall Stem, 1978 (Cat. No. 3) and Four Open Rectangles Diagonal Jointed Gyratory V, 1995–2004 (Cat. No. 6) revolve and sweep up and down, bowing, then stopping, like a partner going all the way around. Within the sculpture’s constructed limits the dance is random, fluid, unpredictable, and controlled. With their gyratory rotations around the support stem, this creates beautiful, fluid movements.

In early 1971 my parents returned to Berlin again as guests of the Within the sculpture’s DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), which had initially invited constructed limits my father, my mother and myself, the dance is random, for a fellowship in January 1968. fluid, unpredictable, Thinking they were in Berlin for a short time, he set up a minimal and controlled. studio in the garage with hand tools, pliers, hammer, anvil, a small torch, and an electric drill. From his initial question “What can I make under limited conditions?” sprang a cornucopia of works in stainless steel welding wire comprising a vast array of sculptures — lines, triangles, meanders — of surprising variety. He proved that even with extremely limited means he could invent new methods to explore his creative kinetic impulse.

To compensate for his limited dexterity, he decided to return to his first love, color, and use it to animate the simple pivoting folded and rotor sculptures he had begun to make. This was also a return to his roots as a painter and to an important element in his early sculptures.

Harlequin, 1958 (Cat. No. 1) is representative of color in his work in the 1950s, used in conjunction with shiny stainless steel to add a new visual dynamic in these works. Those painted works in the 1990s show a new intent and painterly-ness.

Column of Six Cubes with Gimbal, 1995–1996 (Cat. No. 4) is a bridge between similar stainless steel Columns of Cubes to his renewed love of paints and brush strokes. Color here is expressed and used with a vitality and exuberance, quite different from how he used it in his early work.

The kinetic elements are now a “canvas” on which his enthusiasm played out. This work represents a large-scale, but “tiny” sample of the hundreds of small single and multi-element painted sculptures my father completed from the early 1990s until his death.

Though they grew out of the necessity to keep working with new means, due to his physical limitations, the late painted works show he could continue to keep “having something to show for the day’s work”. The chromatic sculptures were the last separate body of sculptural work my father completed.

This exhibition includes works of a unique expressive quality. When considered as a group, one can marvel at George Rickey’s ongoing creative spirit that continued under all conditions to invent.

This kind of creativity will remain an inspiration to me.

Note: Portions of this essay first appeared in a different form in the catalogue for the Hauswedell and Nolte, Hamburg, Germany, Auction 380, June 2004, in which part of my parents’ art collection were sold.

The Métier

Momentary trends may be rigged, but the long flow of the Tradition is established by the artists, who also declare what it is through their choice of what they admire, of what nourishes them, of what influences them. This acceptance and confirmation is then passed on in their work.

Michelangelo’s drawings after Giotto in the Bardi Chapel in Florence are an assessment and recommendation spanning two centuries of the Tradition. In criticism, the artists themselves are the authority — Raphael on Michelangelo, Ingres on Raphael, Delacroix on Géricault and Rubens, Picasso on El Greco and Velázquez, Europeans on Pollock, Americans on Gonzalez. Rauschenberg wins his laurels not in Venice nor in the Press nor on collectors’ walls; he wins them in a long time hence when some painter yet unborn thinks of him as he paints.

As for myself, I don’t know whether I am in or out of step — either would be dangerous — or with what. I have plenty to occupy me without that worry. My concern with “movement itself” — Gabo’s phrase — leads me into ever deeper, if narrower, water, I will never explore the whole gamut of it — the possibilities are too wide. I am less and less interested in exploration. I don’t want to show, in my work, what can be done; I do that in my teaching. I want to make simple declaratory statements in a visual language I can control.

I was a long time getting over youth, misgivings, inexperience. I was a painter for twenty years. I have been a teacher for thirty-five. In 1930 I was a Cubist. In 1950, aged forty-three, I had become a sculptor, non-objective, and was soon committed to movement as a means.

I had had three temptations to apostasy — when I was briefly on the editorial staff of Newsweek in the thirties, when my father’s firm offered me a job as I came out of the Air Corps in 1945, and when I had been chairman of a university art department for a time. All three were resisted with relative ease, though common sense argued the other side. One becomes an artist against prudence; one needs, in addition to talent and energy, a lot of luck.

I have been lucky. First in a couple of my teachers — George Lyward, who showed me the function of language; the power of imagination, precision and understatement; the nature of excellence; and what extraordinary results could come from persistence beyond ordinary fatigue. At sixteen I had to write an essay for him on “Order is heaven’s first law.” I was treated with undeserved kindness

and tolerance by my history tutor in Oxford, Humphrey Sumner, later Warden of All Souls College, who introduced me to the just-formed Museum of Modern Art in the Hecksher Building in New York in 1930. He knew so much more about modern art than I, the would-be artist.

At that time I had learned something of academic drawing at the Ruskin School in Oxford and then had too orthodox a Cubist lesson from the books of Clive Bell and Roger Fry, and from my articulate and witty master, André Lhote. At the Académie Moderne I had been baffled by Léger and charmed by Ozenfant.

Much later I was tempted toward art history by Richard Offner and, already forty, was shaken up

by Lasansky in Iowa and then disappointed by the Institute of Design, except for the luminous presence of Buckminster Fuller, an artistic Parsifal outside of art. I too wanted to make art outside of art and had thought the ideas of the Bauhaus would help me. But they had become too academic in Chicago. David Smith gave me my first and only welding lesson and the sound advice to be extravagant with materials. Gabo never taught me, but I have learned much from his Realist Manifesto of 1920 and from his work, in which I saw a lucid, sensitive poetry of space in form. I have learned from teaching and from certain students.

Some of my colleagues would like me to reject the Tradition, like the Chinese emperor who wanted history to start with himself. I have fed on the masters — all the great names you would expect plus nameless hands in ancient, medieval and primitive art. None of the art history I have

George Rickey, 1965

learned is wasted, though the pedagogy was often disastrous. I use it every day. It is not “the new” in a work that shows the artist, but what is outside such competition. Nor is it what he has borrowed from a master — rather what he shares with him.

Add to these young helpers when I can get them.

Help is precious and a danger. Important work is done in solitude. I will use any time-saving tool, but I must ration my help. I make up for this by working very long hours.

We seek an artist’s identity, whether we are Berenson in Florence or a visitor to the Biennale.

An artist seeks his own; in finding it he reveals what he has in common with Giotto or Hokusai, not how he differs. If you’re yourself, you’re unique enough; nobody has ever been you before. The finest accolade to hear from a master is, “You are one of us.” I should be happy to make an art as dull as Poussin, as conventional as Duccio, as neutral as Maillol, and as mechanical as a flying buttress of Chartres or the pavement of the Campidoglio, if I can do it in my own, old way.

Time one must give as it is called for. Long hours are not a burden. I take pleasure in the slow repetitive operations if they are leading somewhere. Suspense builds up in pausing to make sure a subassembly is right; it heightens when enough is done to get the piece off the ground, like the launching of a ship. A new ship sometimes capsizes: “back to the old drawing board!” One may have to make a piece to find out how to make it, and junk what one learned from.

Much that I make can never be exhibited. I draw what I can on paper first, to plan, to anticipate, to clarify. But it is difficult to find, much less solve, all the space and traffic problems on paper. Models help, but to work small may be harder than to work large; and some qualities, such as flexibility, do not change in direct ratio with size.

I have worked for several years with the simple movement of straight lines, as they cut each other, slice the intervening space and divide time, responding to the gentlest air currents. I work also with large complexes of small forms — perhaps a stack of waving lines, or revolving squares in groups too numerous to count, or pivoting eccentric rotors bearing hundreds of lightreflecting strips. Such countless elements together compose simple, monolithic, seething forms, either volumes or surfaces, which oscillate or undulate slowly in a breeze.

Though I do not imitate nature I am aware of resemblances. If my sculptures sometimes look like plants or clouds or waves of the sea, it is because they respond to the same laws of motion and follow the same mechanical principles.

My technology is borrowed from crafts and industry. It has more in common with clocks than with sculpture. The materials are simple: stainlesssteel sheet, rods, bars, angles, pipe; silicon bronze, brass, very occasionally a little silver; lead for the counterweights. I join by silver brazing, acetylene and heliarc welding, spot-welding, occasionally riveting or bolting. The tools are shear, sheet-metal bending brake, drill press, band saw, cut-off wheel, bench grinder, disk grinder, vise; pliers hammers files, in diverse shapes and sizes; and an anvil. You now find all these in any art school; they were formerly only in “industrial arts” departments. Hardware includes allen-head, phillips-head and binding screws; all kinds of nuts and bolts in stainless steel, bronze and brass; taps and dies; silicon carbide to weld onto bearing surfaces; and abrasives and solvents for cleaning.

So I may go from a drawing to a very crude but often large maquette, perhaps of a typical subsection of a complicated piece, improvised, rudimentary, but functional — without proportion, security, finish or elegance. I try to do this very fast, in a day perhaps, to get my direction: to find the limits, to find the proportion, to find if it will work at all. It may take weeks to make the same thing over properly, or it may be scrapped.

Occasionally one is lucky and some completely unforeseen idea comes out of a debacle. My work must be precise or it fails. I am rather sloppy by nature; the precision comes out of need, not personality.

I have been able in the last two years to make larger pieces — the largest is thirty-four feet high.

Part of the spectrum of movement is related to size. In sculpture or painting there is a change in thought when the work is bigger than the artist; with movement there is a functional change in performance as well. Two lines twenty-four inches long may swing across each other at three-or four-second intervals. This seems very slow. A big piece can take half a minute to swing from side to side; this is as different as red from purple.

My work must have air. Indoors, movement depends on open windows, air conditioning, fans, or, with the more delicate pieces, merely on walking past. Outdoors the air is never quite still, the direction changes, the breeze is, for the most

part, silent. Outdoor space requires large pieces and outdoor wind strong ones. They must not only survive, but behave properly in a forty-or fifty-mile-an-hour wind as well as in the lightest airs. The weight of the rain will make a difference, not to mention snow and ice. I must watch a piece outdoors for months before I can be sure of it. Yet I welcome the range of the winds and the hazards of the weather, even if size disqualifies most of these pieces for galleries and museums. The strength of the structure is not a problem. It faces much less buffeting than an airplane or a tree. In moving it gives to the wind, like a sailing ship. But the movement must be limited by stops that are durable, not too abrupt, don’t mess up the design, and leave the movement free in gentle air. In a high wind, moving parts might hit the ground.

Ideally the bearings themselves should so shift the center of gravity with turning (cam action) that gravity itself becomes the brake.

At present my linear forms have a simple triangular section. If over six feet long each comprises three strips at 60°, with spot-welded flanges, tapering to a point with thicker metal at the wide end, which contains the counter-weight and the bearing. Metal must be pieced, as ten or twelve feet are standard lengths. I mark the sheets and have them cut up and the flanges bent at a shop in Albany. My helpers and I weld the parts together in my studio.

I cast counterweights of lead in triangular prisms in one piece for blades up to twenty feet long, in segments weighing twenty-five to thirty pounds apiece for the large ones. The counterweights for each component of my largest sculpture weighed more than a hundred pounds. The hearings are knife edges, much like those on lever scales, with contact surfaces of tungsten carbide polished and very hard, to reduce friction.

Though I do not imitate nature I am aware of resemblances. If my sculptures sometimes look like plants or clouds or waves of the sea, it is because they respond to the same laws of motion and follow the same mechanical principles.

Periodicity produces similar images in sand, water, a skip-rope and an oscilloscope, but none of these is a record of the other. Sometimes I have recognized analogues in titles, after the event, such as Sedge and Windflower. Recently I have preferred a title which identifies the piece

without suggestion, such as Six Lines Horizontal or Ten Pendulums, Ten Cubes, Ten Rotors.

Even without titles abstract works evoke all kinds of associations. Machinery has always done this, as have ships, ploughs and tools. What I have associated with leaves of grass others have seen as weapons; of course “spears,” “shoots” and “blades” are ancient botanical terms. I cannot control evocations.

I respect fine workmanship when it furthers a firmly held purpose. I can see the use of exactness to eliminate mystique and confusion.

I am interested in the recent trend toward objectification of the work of art and the attempts to eliminate emotive, expressive, subjective or personalized influences from the object, also in the idea of a spectator who has no conditioning as a connoisseur. Others as well as I have begun to find that movement is more accessible than static relations in form, and certainly more so than the esoteric calligraphy which has been so important in recent painting.

I feel lucky to live in an epoch when such interests are allowable in art.

I do not claim to be a Constructivist. Yet I respect the humility, rigor, self-effacement and regard for object-rather-than-process which characterized early Constructivist work and gave meaning to the “real” in Gabo’s Realist Manifesto. I see no reason why analytical thought and rational systems need endanger an artist’s work, nor do I mind temperament, if the show of it is not made the purpose. There is a bloom of temperament in Malevich and Albers just as there is a core of reason in Van Gogh and Klee.

Artists prosper, but it becomes no clearer what art is. To present a Swedish roller bearing as art is at least as plausible as Warhol presenting a commercial container. The ultimate in kinetic art may well have been Galileo’s pendulum which swung clear not only of his temperament but of the very rotation of the earth. It was a conscious, bold, imaginative act.

I distrust the idea of art as process or performance, especially when it is a wanton effusion masquerading as “automatic.” Art is not somnambulist. I respect a temperament which can endure control.

George Rickey c.1965 working on Crucifera IV in his studio in East Chatham. Photo by Carl Howard.

LARGE WORKS

Detail

1 H ARLEQUIN, 1958 s tainless steel and polychrome, unique 198.1 x 63.5 x 63.5 cm.

2 SEASCAPE III, 1993 stainless steel, edition 2/3 38.1 x 195.6 x 50.8 cm.

6 blades, each: 121.9 cm.

3 FOUR LINES OBLIQUE GYRATORY — TALL STEM, 1978 s tainless steel, AP 223.5 x 129. 5 cm. maximum height: 243.8 cm. maximum width: 243.8 cm. blades: 91.4 cm.

4 COLUMN OF SIX CUBES WITH GIMBAL, 1995–1996 stainless steel, polychrome, unique 210.8 x 81.3 x 81.3 cm. cubes, each: 20.3 x 20.3 cm.

Detail

5 COLUMN OF TETRAHEDRA VARIATION II, 1976 s tainless steel, unique 284.5 x 49. 5 x 49.5 cm.

6 FOUR OPEN RECTANGLES DIAGONAL JOINTED GYRATORY V, 1995–2004 stainless steel, unique 276.9 x 116.8 x 25.4 cm.

MEDIUM WORKS

7 WILD CARROT II, 1987 stainless steel and lead, unique 80 x 39.4 x 39.4 cm.

8 WO BROKEN LINES T HORIZONTAL, 1968 stainless steel, AP 33 x 95.3 x 10.2 cm.

9 ANNULAR ECLIPSE WALL VARIATION V, 1999 s tainless steel, unique 109.2 x 127 x 15.2 cm.

10 SQUEEZED SQUARES — WALL, 1995 stainless steel, unique 129.5 x 129.5 x 61 cm. squares: 88.9 cm.

11 T IDAL III, 1961 s tainless steel, unique 22.9 x 142.2 x 20.3 cm.

12 NE UP ONE DOWN O OBLIQUE II, 1974 s tainless steel, AP 81.3 x 50.8 x 7.6 cm.

13 U NSTABLE SQUARE VARIATION NO. 3, 1971 s tainless steel with wooden base, AP 71.1 x 50.8 x 7.6 cm.

Detail

14 NEBULA III, 1989 s tainless steel, unique 61 x 96.5 x 91.4 cm.

15 OLUMN OF EIGHT TRIANGLES C WITH SPIRALS, 1973 ilded stainless steel wire, unique g 63.5 x 20.3 x 15.2 cm.

16 ONVERSATION — MONDRIAN C MEETS MALEVICH, 1990 stainless steel, edition 2/3 76.2 x 24.1 x 20.3 cm.

List of works

LARGE WORKS

MEDIUM WORKS

1 H ARLEQUIN, 1958 stainless steel and polychrome, unique 198.1 x 63.5 x 63.5 cm.

7 WILD CARROT II, 1987 stainless steel and lead, unique 80 x 39.4 x 39.4 cm.

2 SEASCAPE III, 1993 stainless steel, edition 2/3 38.1 x 195.6 x 50.8 cm.

6 blades, each: 121.9 cm.

8 TWO BROKEN LINES HORIZONTAL, 1968 stainless steel, AP 33 x 95.3 x 10.2 cm.

3 FOUR LINES OBLIQUE GYRATORY — TALL STEM, 1978 stainless steel, AP 223.5 x 129. 5 cm. maximum height: 243.8 cm. maximum width: 243.8 cm. blades: 91.4 cm.

4 COLUMN OF SIX CUBES WITH GIMBAL, 1995–1996 stainless steel, polychrome, unique 210.8 x 81.3 x 81.3 cm. cubes, each: 20.3 x 20.3 cm.

9 ANNULAR ECLIPSE WALL VARIATION V, 1999 stainless steel, unique 109.2 x 127 x 15.2 cm.

10 SQUEEZED SQUARES — WALL, 1995 stainless steel, unique 129.5 x 129.5 x 61 cm. squares: 88.9 cm.

11 T IDAL III, 1961 stainless steel, unique 22.9 x 142.2 x 20.3 cm.

5 COLUMN OF TETRAHEDRA VARIATION II, 1976 stainless steel, unique 284.5 x 49. 5 x 49.5 cm.

12 O NE UP ONE DOWN OBLIQUE II, 1974 stainless steel, AP 81.3 x 50.8 x 7.6 cm.

6 FOUR OPEN RECTANGLES DIAGONAL JOINTED GYRATORY V, 1995–2004 stainless steel, unique 276.9 x 116.8 x 25.4 cm.

13 U NSTABLE SQUARE VARIATION NO. 3, 1971 stainless steel with wooden base, AP 71.1 x 50.8 x 7.6 cm.

14 NEBULA III, 1989 stainless steel, unique 61 x 96.5 x 91.4 cm.

15 C OLUMN OF EIGHT TRIANGLES WITH SPIRALS, 1973 gilded stainless steel wire, unique 63.5 x 20.3 x 15.2 cm.

16 C ONVERSATION — MONDRIAN MEETS MALEVICH, 1990 stainless steel, edition 2/3 76.2 x 24.1 x 20.3 cm.

George Rickey (1907-2002)

1907 Born in South Bend, Indiana 1928 Ruskin School of Drawing, Oxford, England (through 1929) 1929 BA, Modern History, Balliol College, Oxford, England Académie L’hôte and Académie Moderne, Paris, France (through 1930) 1941 MA, Modern History, Balliol College, Oxford, England 1945 Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, New York, New York (through 1946) 1947 Studied etching under Mauricio Lasansky, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 1948 Institute of Design, Chicago, Illinois (through 1950) 2002 Died in Saint Paul, Minnesota on July 17, 2002

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2016 George Rickey: Selected Works from the Estate 1954–2000, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York 2015 George Rickey: Esculturas, Galeria Marlborough, Barcelona, Spain 2013 George Rickey - Sculpture from the Estate, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York 2012 George Rickey, Galerie Michael Haas, Berlin, Germany 2011 The Art of a Kinetic Sculptor, Sculpture in the Streets, Albany, New York (through 2012)

2007 George Rickey Sculpture: A Retrospective, Vero Beach Museum of Art, Vero Beach, Florida; traveled to Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas (through 2009) 2006 George Rickey Sculptures, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, New York Deux Américains à Paris. Sculptures de George Rickey et Kenneth Snelson, Palais Royal, Paris, France 2004 George Rickey: Retrospective, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, New York 2003 George Rickey. Kinetische Skulpturen, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Germany Kinetische Skulpturen 1956–2000, Verlag der Galerie Brockstedt, Hamburg, Germany, in conjunction with Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, New York 2001 George Rickey: A Tribute, University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, California George Rickey: Defining the Fourth Dimension, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, New York 2000 George Rickey, Gallery Kasahara, Tokyo, Japan George Rickey: A Retrospective 1958–2000, Soma Gallery, La Jolla, California Installation of Annular Eclipse V, organized by the City of New York Parks & Recreation, Park Avenue Malls Planting Projects, New York, New York

George Rickey¸Galerie Michael Haas, Berlin, Germany

1999 George Rickey: Maquettes and drawings related to Crucifera IV, Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama

George Rickey Indoor/Outdoor, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, NY

1998 George Rickey, Veranneman Foundation, Kruishoutem, Belgium

2010 George Rickey: Important Works from the Estate, Marlborough Chelsea, New York, New York

1997 Important Early Sculptures 1951-65: In Recognition of His 90th Year, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, New York

2009 George Rickey: An Evolution, Arts Council, Cultural Development Commission and the City of Indianapolis, Indianapolis, Indiana A Life in Art: Works by George Rickey, Indianapolis Art Center, Indianapolis, Indiana Innovation: George Rickey Kinetic Sculpture, a series of exhibitions in South Bend, Indiana (through 2010): Rickey Trail, City of South Bend/ The Community Foundation of St. Joseph County; Passages of Light and Time: George Rickey’s Life in Motion, The Snite Museum, The University of Notre Dame; George Rickey: Arc of Development, South Bend Museum of Art; Abstraction in the Public Sphere: New Approaches, A Symposium in Celebration of George Rickey, The Snite Museum, The University of Notre Dame 2008 George Rickey: Selected Works from the George Rickey Estate, Marlborough Chelsea, New York, New York

George Rickey: Master of Kinetic Sculpture — In Celebration of His 90th Year, Carl Schlosberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles, California George Rickey: Motion and Silence, Galerie Dr. István Schlégl, Zürich, Switzerland 1995 George Rickey: Recent Sculpture. In grateful memory of Edie Rickey, 1924–1995 — generous friend, gentle mentor, and humorous humanist, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, New York 1994 Rickey: Sieben Kinetische Skulpturen, Galerie Utermann, and Harenberg Verlag, Dortmund, Germany 1993 A Dialogue in Steel and Air: George Rickey, Philharmonic Center for the Arts, Naples, Florida George Rickey in Santa Barbara, University Art Museum, University of California at Santa Barbara, California

1992 George Rickey: In Celebration of his 85th Year, Carl Schlosberg Fine Arts, Sherman Oaks, California

Park, Yorkshire, England; and Manor House, Ilkley, England

George Rickey in Berlin l967–l992, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Germany

George Rickey, New Orleans Plus 30, Art Gallery, Newcomb College, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana

199l George Rickey: Art of Movement, Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, New York

George Rickey: 30 Years of His Art, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, New York

1990 George Rickey: Sculptures l955–l990, Artcurial, Paris, France

1981 George Rickey, Gimpel-Hanover & Andre Emmerich Galerien, Zürich, Switzerland

George Rickey: Kinetic Sculptures, Galerie Utermann, Dortmund, Germany

George Rickey, Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montreal, Canada

1989 George Rickey: Two Exhibitions, John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, California

1980 George Rickey at Makler Gallery, Makler Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

George Rickey — Important Sculpture, Marianne Friedland Gallery, Toronto, Canada

1979 Skulpturen Material Technik, Amerika Haus, West Berlin, Germany

In Celebration of Three Breaking Columns at Rotterdamse, Schouwburg, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

George Rickey: Retrospective Exhibition, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York

George Rickey, Gallery Kasahara, Osaka, Japan

1978 George Rickey. Mobile Skulpturen, Gimpel & Hanover Galerie, Zürich, Switzerland

1988 3 Skulpturen von George Rickey in Köln, Moderne Stadt, Cologne, Germany George Rickey: Indoor/Outdoor Sculptures, Veranneman Foundation, Kruishoutem, Belgium 1987 George Rickey, In Celebration of his Eightieth Year, Carl Schlosberg Fine Arts, Sherman Oaks, California Two Lines Excentric Jointed with Six Angles, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, West Berlin, Germany George Rickey zum 80. Geburtstag, Galerie Pels Leusden, West Berlin, Germany; traveled to Galerie Schoeller, Düsseldorf, Germany George Rickey: Projects for Public Sculpture, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, New York 1986 George Rickey in Bryant Park, concurrent exhibitions at Maxwell Davidson Gallery and Zabriskie Gallery, New York, New York 1985 George Rickey in South Bend, Art Center of South Bend, Indiana University of South Bend, Saint Mary's College, and the Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 1984 George Rickey, Galerie Schoeller, Düsseldorf, Germany George Rickey Kinetische Freiplastiken 1972– 1984, Bauhaus-Archiv, West Berlin, Germany Zeit und Bewegung im Werk von George Rickey, Josef Albers Museum, Quadrat, Bottrop, Germany George Rickey Recent Sculptures, Inkfish Gallery, Denver, Colorado 1982 George Rickey: Kinetic Sculpture on Clydeside, Custom House Quay, St. Enoch Exhibition Centre and Carlton Place, Glasgow, Scotland, with the support of the Scottish Arts Council and Glasgow District Council; traveled to Yorkshire Sculpture

George Rickey, Gallery Kasahara, Osaka, Japan 1977 George Rickey. Kinetische Skulpturen, Städtische Galerie im Städelschen Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, West Germany George Rickey, Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, New York, New York 1976 George Rickey. Kinetische Objekte Material und Technik, Kunsthalle der Stadt, Bielefeld, West Germany 1975 George Rickey, Fordham University Plaza at Lincoln Center and Staempfli Gallery, New York, New York 1974 Sculpture of George Rickey, Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania George Rickey, Galerie Espace NV, Amsterdam, the Netherlands 1973 George Rickey, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover, Germany George Rickey, Nationalgalerie, West Berlin, Germany George Rickey, Galerie Buchholz, Munich, Germany 1972 Sculpture by George Rickey, Museum of Art, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 1971 George Rickey Retrospective Exhibition 1951–71, UCLA Art Council and UCLA Art Galleries, Los Angeles, California (traveling exhibition) 1970 Recent Kinetic Sculpture by George Rickey, Whatcom Museum of History and Art, Bellingham, Washington 1969 George Rickey, Haus am Waldsee, West Berlin, Germany 1968 Mack Rickey, Halfmannshof, Gelsenkirchen, Germany

1967 Recent Kinectic Sculpture, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota 1966 George Rickey: Sixteen Years of Kinetic Sculpture, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 1964 George Rickey: Kinetic Sculptures, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts 1963 George Rickey: Kinetic Sculpture, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, Illinois 1962 George Rickey, Düsseldorf Kunsthalle, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany 1961 George Rickey: Kinetic Sculpture, Kraushaar Gallery, New York, New York 1960 Kinetic Sculpture: George Rickey, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California 1956 Kinetic Sculpture and Machines, Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana 1955 George Rickey: Machines Kinetic Sculptures, Mobiles, Kraushaar Galleries, New York, New York 1953 Mobile Sculpture, John Herron Art Museum, Indianapolis, Indiana 1935 Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado 1933 Caz-Delbo Gallery, New York, New York SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York Am Justizzentrum, Cologne, Germany Art Gallery of Toronto, Toronto, Canada Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland Bayerische Hypotheken und Vechsel Bank, AG, Munich, Germany Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, Germany Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Germany Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pensylvania City Art Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Massachusetts Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Delaware Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan Gibbs Farm, Kaipara, New Zealand Hakone Open Air Museum, Tokyo, Japan Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan Henkel GmbH, Düsseldorf, Germany Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. Hyogo Prefectural Museum, Kobe, Japan Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford, California Kansai University, Osaka, Japan Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany Kunsthalle der Stadt, Berlin, Germany Landtag Nordrhein Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, Missouri Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los

Angeles, California Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York Moderne Galerie (Joseph Albers Museum), QuadratBottrop, Bottrop, Germany Musée de Grenoble, Grenoble, France Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, Indiana Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana Museum of Art, Long Beach, California Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, Texas Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland Neu Perlach, Munich, Germany Neubau des Physikzentrums, Kiel, Germany Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, Purchase, New York Neues Medizinsches Institut, Heidelberg, Germany New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California Olympiad of Art, Olympic Center, Seoul, South Korea Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York Rijksmuseum Kröller Müller, Otterlo, The Netherlands Rückversicherungs Gesellschaft, Munich, Germany San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, California Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California Shizuoka Museum, Shizuoka, Japan Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC Snite Museum, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana Tate Gallery, London, England Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv, Israel The Gateway Foundation, St. Louis, Missouri The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California The Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York The Sondra and Marvin Smalley Family Sculpture Garden, Bel-Air, California The Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio Union Bank of Switzerland, Zürich, Switzerland Vero Beach Museum of Art, Vero Beach, Florida Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York Williams College Museum, Williamstown, Massachusetts Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut

Sculptures in Selected UK Public Collections

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh Two Lines Up Excentric VI (Two Slender Lines Excentric), 1977 stainless steel, 670 cm.

Holywell Manor Garden, Balliol College, Oxford Two Planes Vertical Horizontal II, 1969 stainless steel, unique artist’s proof, 411 x 323 cm.

Trinity House Hospice, Clapham, London Four Open Squares Horizontal Gyratory Tapered, 1984 stainless steel, 518 x 165 cm.

Acquired by the Sainsbury Family and donated to the Hospice

Marlborough

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Back cover: Conversation — Mondrian Meets Malevich, 1990, stainless steel, edition 2/3, 76.2 x 24.1 x 20.3 cm.

Photography: Devon Johnson All works photography: © The George Rickey Estate Design: Stocks Taylor Benson Print: Benwells ISBN 978–1–909707–38–2 Catalogue No. 665 © 2017 Marlborough