George Rickey: Sculpture from the Estate

GEORGE RICKEY S C U L P T U R E F R O M T H E E S TAT E

GEORGE RICKEY S C U L P T U R E F R O M T H E E S TAT E

S E P T E M B E R 1 2 - O C TO B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 3

4 0 W E S T 57 T H S T R E E T N E W YO R K , N Y 1 0 0 1 9 + 1 2 1 2 5 41 4 9 0 0 M A R L B O R O U G H G A L L E RY.CO M

P R E FA C E

Many of these twenty-one works are from the private holdings of the George Rickey Estate and have never been shown in a gallery or offered for sale. According to George Rickey’s son Philip, during his career George Rickey placed certain works in his own “archive.” These were sculptures he decided he wouldn’t sell, and comprised works from his early development, or those which he designated as “zeros”— his form of artist proof, first examples of editions that he wanted to reflect upon during his daily routines at home and in his studio. Other works here are those that he made and gave to his wife Edie Rickey, which were often the original attempt at something fundamental, such as One Rotor with Gimbal and Counterweight, 1968, a birthday gift.

This exhibition covers the spectrum of George Rickey’s unique sculptural voice, from his gently oscillating Orenary (1955), to his humorous Interview (1961), from the simple One Rotor with Gimbal and Counterweight (1968), to the complex Crucifera (1964) and its vertical recapitulation 30 years later in 1994. George Rickey kept these sculptures close at hand as personally meaningful works, and now for the first time they are available for client consideration.

Dale M. Lanzone Marlborough Gallery 2013

George Rickey at work on Crucifera IV, 1965. Š George Rickey Estate.

G E O R G E R I C K E Y: R E F L E C T I O N S O N H I S CO L L E C T I O N A N D H I S A RT

Because of the very personal relationship my father had with many of the works exhibited here, I have been asked by my friends at Marlborough Gallery to offer some historical reflections on his art, 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 pieces close at home and in his studio where he could refer to them for technical, esthetic and inspirational purposes—obviously, never offering them for sale.

As I was growing up in rural upstate New York, our house was always filled with art. This artwork was 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, a work of “so many elements they can’t be counted,” which wavered gently 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.

I think my parents’ collection created an atmosphere of artistic ideas that was interesting and inspiring to my father, and useful in his teaching of art history and design. For the most part, the artwork in the house did not directly influence my father in the studio. However, 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, as I recall, a small painting by Mark Tobey entitled Ancient Empires. My father acquired the first of many works by Ulfert Wilke in 1956. Because of their special friendship our house had more Wilkes than any other artist. Indeed, he and my father were constantly in touch throughout the decades, with weekly letter correspondence (faithfully preserved), and Ulfert frequently visited our East Chatham house.

In the mid-sixties, when our dining and living rooms were being renovated, my father commissioned Ulfert to do a series of doors for the shelves and “hatch”

between the kitchen and dining room. Ulfert visited for an extended period one summer, prepared the gessoed panels in a vacant studio space above my father’s, and then proceeded to create six sets of four doors each: fall, winter, spring, and summer, a black on white, and a silver and gold set. Each was done with different sized metalnibbed pens in red, blue, green, and other colors. Each had a different composition, openness, and density. My father and Ulfert spent the days working in the studio with lunch and dinner time filled with wide-ranging and interesting conversations, even for this five-year-old boy.

The calligraphic mark-making of Ulfert’s works from the mid-fifties on, and the intense, all-over 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 works my father started making in the late 50s, 60s, and throughout the end of his career; works that were similar to Nuages, that had “so many elements you can’t count them.”

These many elements were painted or shiny, constructed in stacked configurations like the Vines, Nebula, and Carousel, or like works such as Interview with its multijointed swinging elements. Other sculptures, like Spruce, utilized groups of rotors in simple or complex configurations, inspired by, and analogous to, flowers and plants. Nuages was constructed as an undulating plane of individual moving seesaw elements. As my father gained mastery and confidence in his technical abilities, this fascination with “many” developed through the years in ever more complex sculptures. This culminated in the mid-1960s, with major works including the twenty-onefoot-tall by thirty-two-foot-long Crucifera IV (1965), initially commissioned for the Lytton Savings Bank in Oakland, CA, and restored and relocated in 1998 to the Birmingham Alabama Museum of Art. Crucifera III (1964), is the smaller scale first example leading to that sculpture. (The name Crucifera refers to the flower of cruciferous vegetables, like broccoli and cauliflower.)

I recall many of the steps in this great sculpture’s evolution. The first model for the chassis was made with multicolored sticks and hubs from a child’s play set, creating the tetrahedral infrastructure that needed to be strong yet lightweight to support the hundreds of rotors and counterweights. This structure went through many alterations before arriving at a form satisfying to my father’s aesthetic and structural concerns. This was the first time he solicited engineering advice from his Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute teaching colleague, the engineer Roland Hummel, a collaboration that continued until my father’s death.

In order to construct a chassis that would be as light and airy as possible, my father had to hire a certified welder. We happened to know one, Bill Jackson, who also owned a tavern in Old Chatham and was the caterer for my parent’s annual midsummer parties. During the summer of 1964, Bill would come to the studio every afternoon after welding bridges to help construct the superstructure of Crucifera. When it was completed, my father borrowed a couple hundred thirty-pound cement blocks from the local Hick’s Lumberyard and hung them on the chassis as an improvised stress test. With Roland present, Larry Hicks came by with his fourwheel drive forklift and lifted the weighted chassis up to see what would happen. It performed well and the sculpture fabrication could continue. I, the five-year-old son, was the enthusiastic assistant observing all aspects of this and helping to move the cement blocks in my red wagon. I also remember that it took my father a long time to find a strong enough universal joint support for the pivoting chassis, finally using one developed for U.S. naval nuclear submarines.

After the exuberance and expenditure of this very involved project, my father never again attempted such a complex outdoor work with so many individual elements.

In later years he would periodically return to the rotor theme in works like Spruce (1994). Also in 1994, he came back to the crucifera idea with Crucifera-Pillar of Light, the first time in many years he made such an intricate work.

As noted earlier, there were certain pieces that held sway in my father’s collection, and which he acknowledged were an influence and inspiration for his work. This was the group of Japanese prints that lived in a dim upstairs hallway between a spare bedroom and the guest bathroom. Most had been purchased in 1954, though two were bought in 1935. A couple of images depicted views of activity both inside and outside of a house. What intrigued my father, and later influenced a whole series of works, was the sliver of a view through an open door or window, the narrow rectangle being repeated and revealing a world beyond. Kunisada’s early nineteenthcentury Invasion of a House, is one I remember distinctly, though I’m sure my father probably saw many others during his working trip to Japan in 1969. This was the impetus for the series of “open rectangle” sculptures, which he subsequently developed further to include all manner of open geometric forms; circles, triangles and squares interacting in marvelous ways when stirred by a breeze. The resultant emerging views of rectangles crossing and reframing the world, as seen through the stainless steel aperture, parallel the narrow Japanese scenes, where inside and the outside worlds intersect through an open door.

From the mid-seventies on, when those first “open rectangles” appeared as an image in my father’s vocabulary, other geometric forms sprang to life: in pairings such as Annular Eclipse and Two Open Triangles Leaning II, and also in more complex configurations like Oblique Column of Twelve Open Squares and Four Open Rectangles Diagonal Jointed Gyratory V. Two Open Triangles Leaning follows a long line of works that juxtapose two similar elements placed on knife-edge bearings which move slowly past each other, breaking and reframing what is seen through or between the triangular frames. Oblique Column of Twelve Open Squares sets up an interaction between open squares, the long diagonal and the views framed by the succession of stepped squares.

Four Open Rectangles Diagonal Jointed Gyratory V takes two pairs of connected rectangles and creates an open diamond at rest. With its gyratory movement (all moving elements rotate around the top of the post)

this configuration creates a beautiful, fluid dynamism which is unanticipated by the work’s “diamond” at-rest pose. Moved by the breeze, its rectangles revolve and sweep up and down, bowing, then stopping, a partner going all the way round. Their synchronous motion is an improvisation with the sculpture’s configuration, setting the limits of movement. Within those limits the dance is random, fluid, unpredictable and controlled, not unlike the saxophone riffs of John Coltrane.

In the late nineties and the turn of the millennium, my father produced the last of his “open” geometry with his Annular Eclipse sculptures. The eight foot Annular Eclipse, and its successor Annular Eclipse-Sixteen Feet, my father’s last masterwork, required a very long evolution. One wouldn’t expect that the simple idea of two circles talking to each other would be so difficult to create. But building a circle from sheet metal is not so simple, because the main strength of the structure derives from the fin-like flanges along the edge of a curving triangular box. The gestation of this work from crude maquettes, to an eightfoot diameter, then a sixteen, took almost six to seven years of painstaking trial and error. As with the other “open” works, my father was interested in what was seen through the moving frame, and in the expanding and contracting arcs created as the circles conversed in the breezes. Full rotation was not his primary goal, though it is dramatic when a gust of wind moves each circle at a different speed through full rotation. 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.

In early 1971 my parents returned to Berlin again as guests of the DAAD, (German Academic Exchange Service) which had initially invited my father accompanied by my mother and me for a one and a half year fellowship in January 1968. He and my mother found a wonderful apartment on the second floor of a house in Dahlem, a suburb of West Berlin. The house, designed by Hans Scharoun, (architect of the Berlin Philharmonic Hall) had large, spherical, seed-like chandeliers hanging in the stairwell.

Thinking that he would only be in Berlin for four or five months that winter, George set up a minimal studio in the garage. His only equipment were hand tools, pliers, a hammer, an 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; he indeed found that “necessity is the mother of invention.” Over the course of that winter and spring, he used only stainless welding wire as his material, bending and hammering the flat areas to make his knife-edge bearings and the flat wind-catching sail area on lines, and making a spring-like spiral weave at each end as the counterweight. The resulting sculptures, which he continued to create throughout the rest of his life, explore all of his basic forms, from simple pairs to more complex groups of lines, squares and triangles. The sculpture Column of Eight Triangles with Spirals (1973) is such a work, which he plated in gold, making it more visible and reflective than the ubiquitous stainless steel.

When I visited my parents on spring break, March 1971, I marveled at the plethora of wonderful new lightweight and airy works, some already plated, and others with beautiful stone agate and black and green onyx bases.

The “column” of different elements was an image my father employed from the sixties onward with a multiplicity of geometric forms: squares, lines, triangles, etc. It was also an idea that was part of the minimalism imagery of the sixties and seventies, although my father’s columns differed from his colleagues’. His were static for a moment until a breath of air broke up the perfect, stacked harmony. His interest was something less formal and severe, more serendipitous and playful.

In the early nineties, my father developed carpal tunnel syndrome in his left hand. Born left-handed he learned to write with his right in school. All mechanical skills like using pliers, filing, or sawing a piece of wood, however, were performed with his natural, left hand. All detail work, writing, drawing, and painting he did with his right hand.

Prior to his convalescence, he had begun to make small folded sculptures, cubist and baroque, depending whether they were angular or containing curved folds, which pivoted simply upon an indent, supported by a sharp stem.

To compensate for his limited dexterity, he decided to begin to use color to animate the simple pivoting forms.

This was also a return to his roots as a painter. Some, like Untitled, No.00-189 and Untitled, No.00-104, were composed of groups of painted forms. In others, the full expression was on the pivoting pagoda, circle, or cubist folded shape such as in Untitled, No.00-358; Untitled, No.00-481; Untitled, No.00-042; all from the late nineties or early aughts. This chromatic group, composed of an array of individual forms, was the last separate body of sculptural work my father completed. This small group is indicative of the variety of shapes and constellations embodied in those late works, most of which have no specific titles—an anomaly for my father. And like the sculptures with spirals, their form and arrangement grew out of the necessity to work, as well as the necessity to change methods to keep, as he liked to say, “having something to show for the day’s work.”

These are works of a unique expressive quality, much like the late work of Picasso and Matisse. When considered as a group, one can marvel at the ongoing creative spirit that continued, under all conditions, to invent.

This kind of creativity will remain an inspiration to me.

Philip Rickey New York, August 2013

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

M O N U M E N TA L S C U L P T U R E

Two Lines Oblique Gyratory II, 1989, stainless steel, edition of 3 Height: 341 3/4 in., 868.1 cm; max. 384 in., 975.4 cm; Width: 238 in., 604.5 cm; max. 340 1/2 in., 864.9 cm; Blades: 180 in., 457.2 cm

Six Random Lines Excentric II, 1992, stainless steel, edition of 3 Height: 170 in., 431.8 cm; Width: 168 in., 426.7 cm; Blades: 65 in., 165.1 cm

Annular Eclipse V, 2000, stainless steel, unique 186 x 105 x 20 in., 472.4 x 266.7 x 50.8 cm

Oblique Column of Twelve Open Squares, 1977, stainless steel, edition of 3 126 x 170 x 25 in., 320 x 431.8 x 63.5 cm

Four Open Rectangles Diagonal Jointed Gyratory V, 1995-2004, stainless steel, unique 109 x 46 x 10 in., 276.9 x 116.8 x 25.4 cm

Two Lines Excentric Jointed with Six Angles (Non Tapered), 1986, stainless steel, edition of 3 108 x 54 in., 274.3 x 137.2 cm

One Up One Down Excentric, 1977, stainless steel, AP from an edition of 3 126 x 78 x 4 in., 320 x 198.1 x 10.2 cm, (max. diameter: 156 in., 396.2 cm)

Three Rectangles Horizontal Jointed Gyratory IV, 1991, stainless steel, edition of 3 94 x 49 (max. 98 1/4) in., 238.8 x 124.5 (max. 249.6) cm; Max. radius: 68 in., 172.7 cm; Rectangles: 40 x 9 x 3 1/2 in., 101.6 x 22.9 x 8.9 cm

Four Lines Oblique Gyratory Tall Stem, 1978, stainless steel, unique, 88 x 51 in., 223.5 x 129.5 cm

SMALL SCULPTURE

Plumage, 1957, polychromed stainless steel, unique 21 x 11 x 11 in., 53.3 x 27.9 x 27.9 cm

Orenary (Space Churn Theme), 1955, stainless steel, unique 42 x 8 x 7 in., 106.7 x 20.3 x 17.8 cm

Crucifera - Pillar of Light (Wall), 1994, stainless steel, unique 97 x 20 in., 246.4 x 50.8 cm

Column of Tetrahedra Variation II, 1976, stainless steel, unique 112 x 19 1/2 x 19 1/2 in., 284.4 x 49.5 x 49.5 cm

One Rotor with Cube and Gimbal, 1995, polychromed stainless steel, unique 12 x 5 x 4 in., 30.5 x 12.7 x 10.2 cm

Interview I, 1961, stainless steel, bronze and copper, unique 22 x 8 x 4 in., 55.9 x 20.3 x 10.2 cm

Crucifera III (study), 1964, stainless steel, unique 25 x 68 x 24 in., 63.5 x 172.7 x 61 cm

Spruce V, 1994, stainless steel, unique 35 x 11 x 12 in., 88.9 x 27.9 x 30.5 cm

Column of Eight Triangles with Spirals, 1973, gilded stainless steel wire, unique 25 x 8 in., 63.5 x 20.3 cm

Two Open Triangles Leaning II, 1992, stainless steel, unique (marked 1/3; only this work was made) 32 x 22 in., 81.3 x 55.9 cm

Two Vertical Three Horizontal Lines (Non-Pivoting) (study), 1966, stainless steel, unique 51 1/2 x 36 1/2 x 5 1/2 in., 130.8 x 92.7 x 14 cm

Untitled, 2000, polychromed stainless steel, unique 10 3/4 x 7 3/4 x 5 1/2 in., 27.31 x 19.7 x 14 cm

LEFT: Untitled,

2000, polychromed stainless steel, unique 10 1/4 x 9 1/2 x 4 1/2 in., 26 x 24.1 x 11.4 cm

RIGHT: Untitled,

2001, polychromed stainless steel, unique 15 1/4 x 10 1/2 x 7 in., 38.7 x 26.7 x 17.8 cm

LEFT: Pivoted

Fold, 1996, stainless steel, unique 9 x 6 1/2 in., 22.9 x 16.5 cm RIGHT: Untitled,

2000, polychromed stainless steel, unique 17 x 15 1/2 x 15 1/2 in., 43.2 x 39.4 x 39.4

Untitled, 1998, polychromed stainless steel, unique 21 3/4 x 18 x 18 in., 55.3 x 45.7 x 45.7 cm

One Rotor with Gimbal and Counterweight, 1968, stainless steel, unique 13 1/2 x 4 x 3 in., 34.3 x 10.2 x 7.6 cm

GEORGE RICKEY (1907 – 2002)

1907 1928

Born in South Bend, Indiana, of New England heritage 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 1942-45 US Army Air Corps 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) 1995 Gold Medal for Sculpture, American Academy of Arts and Letters 2002 Died in Saint Paul, Minnesota on July 17th S E L E C T E D S O LO E X H I B I T I O N S 1933 1935 1953 1955 1956 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971

Caz-Delbo Gallery, New York, New York Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado Mobile Sculpture, John Herron Art Museum, Indianapolis, Indiana George Rickey: Machines Kinetic Sculptures, Mobiles, Kraushaar Galleries, New York, New York Kinetic Sculpture and Machines, Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana Kinetic Sculpture: George Rickey, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California George Rickey: Kinetic Sculpture, Kraushaar Gallery, New York, New York George Rickey, Düsseldorf Kunsthalle, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany George Rickey: Kinetic Sculpture, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, Illinois George Rickey: Kinetic Sculptures, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts George Rickey: Sixteen Years of Kinetic Sculpture, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Recent Kinectic Sculpture, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota Mack Rickey, Halfmannshof, Gelsenkirchen, Germany George Rickey, Haus am Waldsee, West Berlin, Germany Recent Kinetic Sculpture by George Rickey, Whatcom Museum of History and Art, Bellingham, Washington George Rickey Retrospective Exhibition 1951-71, UCLA Art Council and UCLA Art Galleries, Los Angeles, California (traveling exhibition)

1972 1973

1974

1975 1976 1977

1978

1979

1980 1981

1982

1984

Sculpture by George Rickey, Museum of Art, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa George Rickey, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover, Germany George Rickey, Nationalgalerie, West Berlin, Germany George Rickey, Galerie Buchholz, Munich, Germany Sculpture of George Rickey, Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania George Rickey, Galerie Espace NV, Amsterdam, the Netherlands George Rickey, Fordham University Plaza at Lincoln Center and Staempfli Gallery, New York, New York George Rickey. Kinetische Objekte Material und Technik, Kunsthalle der Stadt, Bielefeld, West Germany George Rickey. Kinetische Skulpturen, Städtische Galerie im Städelschen Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, West Germany George Rickey, Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, New York, New York George Rickey. Mobile Skulpturen, Gimpel & Hanover Galerie, Zürich, Switzerland George Rickey, Gallery Kasahara, Osaka, Japan Skulpturen Material Technik, Amerika Haus, West Berlin, Germany George Rickey: Retrospective Exhibition, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York George Rickey at Makler Gallery, Makler Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania George Rickey, Gimpel-Hanover+Andre Emmerich Galerien, Zürich, Switzerland George Rickey, Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montreal, Canada 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 Park, Yorkshire, England; and Manor House, Ilkley, England George Rickey, New Orleans Plus 30, Art Gallery, Newcomb College, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana George Rickey: 30 Years of His Art, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, New York 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

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

199l 1992

1993

1994 1995

1997

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 George Rickey in Bryant Park, concurrent exhibitions at Maxwell Davidson Gallery and Zabriskie Gallery, New York, New York 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 3 Skulpturen von George Rickey in Köln, Moderne Stadt, Cologne, West Germany George Rickey: Indoor/Outdoor Sculptures, Veranneman Foundation, Kruishoutem, Belgium George Rickey: Two Exhibitions, John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, California George Rickey - Important Sculpture, Marianne Friedland Gallery, Toronto, Canada In Celebration of Three Breaking Columns at Rotterdamse, Schouwburg, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands George Rickey, Gallery Kasahara, Osaka, Japan George Rickey: Sculptures 1955 1990, Artcurial, Paris, France George Rickey: Kinetic Sculptures, Galerie Utermann, Dortmund, Germany George Rickey: Art of Movement, Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, New York George Rickey: In Celebration of his 85th Year, Carl Schlosberg Fine Arts, Sherman Oaks, California George Rickey in Berlin 1967 1992, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Germany 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 Rickey: Sieben Kinetische Skulpturen, Galerie Utermann, and Harenberg Verlag, Dortmund, Germany 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 Important Early Sculptures 1951-65: In Recognition of His 90th Year, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, New York George Rickey: Master of Kinetic Sculpture—In Celebration of His 90th Year, Carl Schlosberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles, California

1998 1999 2000

2001

2002 2003

2004 2006

2007

2008 2009

George Rickey: Motion and Silence, Galerie Dr. István Schlégl, Zürich, Switzerland George Rickey, Veranneman Foundation, Kruishoutem, Belgium George Rickey: Maquettes and drawings related to Crucifera IV, Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama 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: A Tribute, University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, California George Rickey: Defining the Fourth Dimension, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, New York Kunstpreis Finkenwerder 2002. George Rickey, Airbus, Hamburg, Germany 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 George Rickey: Retrospective, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, New York George Rickey, in conjunction with the group exhibition, Momentum: Selections from the Kinetic Art Organization, Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey 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 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) George Rickey: Selected Works from the George Rickey Estate, Marlborough Chelsea, New York, New York 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

2010 2011

2012

George Rickey: Important Works from the Estate, Marlborough Chelsea, New York, New York George Rickey: Indoor/Outdoor, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, New York Downtown Albany Sculpture in the Streets - George Rickey, Albany, New York (through 2012) George Rickey, Michael Haas Galerie, Berlin, Germany

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York Am Justizzentrum, Cologne, Germany 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), Quadrat-Bottrop, 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, D.C. 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 Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, Inaugural Gift of the Class of 1961 Public Art Fund Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut

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MADRID /

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Important Works available by: Twentieth-Century European Masters; Post-War American Artists Dale Lanzone Maeve O’Regan P R O D U C T I O N / Daniel McCann, Annie Rochfort, Laura Stewart E D I TO R /

DESIGN /

P H OTO G R A P H Y /

MARLBOROUGH CONTEMPORARY 6 Albemarle Street London, W1S 4BY Telephone 44.20.7629.5161 info@marlboroughcontemporary.com www.marlboroughcontemporary.com

Dale Lanzone, Daniel McCann, Bill Orcutt

P R I N T E D I N N E W YO R K B Y P R O J E C T

© 2013 Marlborough Gallery, Inc. ISBN 978-0-89797-455-4

GEORGE RICKEY SCULPTURE FROM T H E E S TAT E

S E P T E M B E R 1 2 - O C TO B E R 1 2 , 2 0 1 3

4 0 W E S T 57 T H S T R E E T N E W YO R K , N Y 1 0 0 1 9 + 1 2 1 2 5 41 4 9 0 0 M A R L B O R O U G H G A L L E RY.C O M