RICKEY, GEORGE
1907 South Bend, IN/USA–2002 St. Paul, MN/USA

Title: Two Up, Three Out.
Date: 1966.
Technique: Rust-free V2A steel.
Measurement: 530 x 304 x 80 cm.


The work will be included in the catalogue raisonné being compiled. We are grateful to the George Rickey Foundation, Inc. for its generous academic support.



Provenance:
- - Galerie Alfred Schmela, Düsseldorf (acquired from the artist in 1975)

- Private collection, Cologne (acquired from previous owner in 1978)



- A minimalist sculpture featuring technically precise mechanics by the pioneer of kinetic art

- Complex, dance-like movement patterns based on simple basic elements

- A meditative power emanates from the variety of forms shifting in the wind

- Family-owned since 1978



Formative Experiences

The American artist George Rickey (1907–2002) is regarded as one of the pioneers of kinetic art. Raised in Scotland, he initially studied history at Oxford before turning to art studies in Paris and later settling in the United States as an art teacher. During the Second World War, Rickey worked as an engineer for the U.S. Army in research divisions concerned with aircraft and weapons systems. The expertise he gained in precision engineering and mechanical systems would later become foundational to his artistic practice.

Inspired by the mobiles of Alexander Calder, Rickey began developing movable sculptures after 1945. He was likewise influenced by the welded compositions of sculptor David Smith, assembled from tools and machine parts, which helped shape Rickey’s own formal vocabulary.



Variable Relations Instead of Static Form

Working from reduced geometric elements such as lines, squares, triangles, and prisms, Rickey created three-dimensional structures whose changing spatial perception arises through the shifting relationships of their individual components.

In 1951, Rickey’s first kinetic sculpture was presented in the group exhibition American Sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. From that point onward, he became one of the leading representatives of an artistic movement that regards movement as an integral aesthetic principle.

A three-time participant in the documenta (1964, 1968, and 1977), Rickey spent many years working in Berlin, where important examples of his work remain installed in public space today—including on the terrace of the Neue Nationalgalerie. In 1967, he published the collection of essays Constructivism – Origins and Evolution, in which he traced an art historical trajectory from Constructivism through geometric abstraction to kinetic art.



Art in Harmony with Natural Forces

Rickey employed the laws of physics to create technically sophisticated constructions whose movements are driven solely by wind and gravity. He preferred working with stainless steel, allowing the treated surfaces to interact dynamically with light and thereby generate additional visual effects.

In doing so, Rickey not only dismantled the static nature traditionally associated with sculpture but also established an active relationship between the work and its environment:



“Kinetic art does not make use of ‘nature’ through imitation of appearance, but through the recognition of its laws, through an awareness of analogies and correspondences with the comprehensive repertoire of movement and space.”

— George Rickey, quoted in György Kepes, The Nature of Motion, New York, 1965.



A Filigree Structure of Forms

As in much of Rickey’s oeuvre, the present stainless steel sculpture consists of individual formal elements grouped around a stabilizing support. A vertical rod forms the central axis or trunk, at the upper end of which freely moving, pointed, needle-like forms—resembling reduced branches—are attached.

Although its height of more than five meters conveys a certain monumentality, the sculpture appears remarkably delicate and fragile in its overall effect. Within its precisely balanced configuration, Rickey employed specialized ball bearings to explore the degrees of freedom available to the individual rods anchored at a fixed point.

Despite the sculpture’s minimalist appearance, Rickey, through meticulous calculation of movement radii and positions, creates a richly varied and highly complex choreography of fluid interactions without physical contact. With a dancer-like grace, the components shift against one another along precise trajectories, unfolding through their constantly changing configurations a quiet, meditative force.

Bettina Haiss



Estimated shipping costs for this lot:
The lot is unsuitable for parcel shipping. Transport only by shipping company after consultation following the auction.

additional shipping insurance


Shipping insurance

up to total invoice amount of 25,000 Euros: max. 41.65 Euro

over a total invoice amount of 25,000 Euros: 1.8 o/oo


USA by individual arrangement after the auction.




#George Rickey #USA #Post-War Art #1960s #Abstract #Object #Sculpture.







In accordance with §26 UrhG (German Copyright Act), VAN HAM is obliged to pay a statutory resale royalty on the sale proceeds of all original works of fine art and photography whose authors have not been deceased for 70 years prior to the end of the calendar year of the sale. The buyer shall contribute 1.5% of the hammer price to this fee.