George Rickey

Galerie Schöller, Cologne
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1991

George Rickey began constructing large-scale kinetic sculptures in the early 1950’s after receiving encouragement and welding lessons from his colleague at the University of Indiana, David Smith.  However, unlike Smith, Rickey was not preoccupied with the static form of the sculpture, rather, as the artist noted, “since the design of the movement is paramount, shape should have no significance of itself; it merely makes movement evident.” As a result, for over 50 years Rickey focused his creative energies on marvelous large-scale sculptures that subordinated form for movement.  

Four Rectangles Excentric II and One Up, One Down Eccentric, are prime examples of Rickey’s mature philosophy.  These great engineering marvels are paradigms of Rickey’s collaboration with the forces of nature.  Like a rolling wave, each work moves in a rhythmic yet seemingly unpredictable pattern which recalls the positive and negative natural forces of order and chaos.  Fittingly, they are equally at home in city or country as they engage in a continually active conceptual dialogue with their surrounding world devoid of preference for greenery or concrete.  Consequently, Rickey’s sculpture only asks patience from the viewer for, as Rickey scholar Nan Rosenthal observes, “the system itself – the work – speaks for itself as celebration of pure event.”

Overleaf Quote:

“Whirling forms look as if they might collide.  When they do not, their exact geometry elicits the emotions we feel in seeing trapeze artist flinging themselves through space – wonder at, and gratitude for, their discipline, and then relief for what Rickey calls their ‘narrow escapes.’”  - Dr. Hayden Herrera