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Rickey, George (Warren)
(b South Bend, IN, 6 June 1907). American sculptor. Brought up near Glasgow in Scotland, he left in 1929 to study in Paris with Andre Lhote, Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant. He returned to the USA in 1934, taught at several colleges and continued to paint. While working as a gunnery instructor in the army during World War II, Rickey had access to a machine shop and created his first sculpture, small mobiles reminiscent of Alexander Calder’s work. After being exposed to Constructivist theories through lectures by Naum Gabo at the Institute of Design, Chicago, and an exhibition of works by Antoine Pevsner at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1948, he abandoned painting to focus on KINETIC ART. His early sculpture varied from whimsical, referential pieces like Cocktail Party (1954; New York, Mr and Mrs Stephen Kellen priv. col.), of painted mild steel and stainless steel, to more purely formal geometric work. Rickey’s mature style emerged between 1957 and 1962. He reduced his forms to simple geometric shapes, limited his medium to stainless steel, eliminated colour and increased the scale of his work. At Documenta III (1964) Rickey established an international reputation with Two Lines Temporal (1964; New York, MOMA), two identical 10-m triangular stainless-steel blades pivoting on knife-edge bearings attached to a pole; the blades have internal counterweights and swing freely in non-intersecting arcs. In the field of kinetic sculpture Rickey’s work was distinguished by a commitment to non-motorized movement. He continued the Lines series in the late 1960s, adding moving planes and volumes to his vocabulary with the Planes, Rectangles, Crucifera and Space Churn series of the late 1960s and 1970s, and the L-shaped beams of the 1980s. Rickey’s sculpture is a study in opposition: his forms are simple and orderly, yet their movement is complex and spontaneous; they are strong enough to withstand forceful winds yet light enough to be moved by the slightest breeze.
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