As of 2021, it had been over twenty years since George Rickey installed the first sculpture to be featured on Park Avenue, starting a tradition that has continued with work by various renowned artists.
During August 2021–May 2022, Rickey returned to New York with nine sculptures on Park Avenue and three works in the Kasmin Sculpture Garden adjacent to the High Line, making this the largest exhibition of his monumental sculptures ever shown in the City.
This map guides you on a tour of those sculptures and of his Annular Eclipse on 6th Avenue at 48th Street.
George Rickey (1907-2002) was an American artist, best known for his large-scale, geometric, kinetic sculptures. Many of his artworks were designed to be seen outside, made of stainless steel that reflects its changing surroundings, and naturally powered by air currents. His work is represented in many leading museum collections worldwide, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.
Rickey was born in South Bend, Indiana. His father was a mechanical engineer and his grandfather was a clockmaker, and they both encouraged his interest in engineering and design. Rickey studied painting and drawing in Oxford, Paris, and Chicago. He became an art teacher and an artist, working and living for much of his life in upstateNew York. In the 1950s, Rickey developed his signature approach to kinetic sculpture.
Kinetic sculpture is three-dimensional art that moves. The movement can be generated by machines, people, or – as with Rickey’s works – nature.
Rickey was one of two famous 20th-century artists known for kinetic sculpture, the other being Alexander Calder. Taking Calder’s mobiles as his starting point, Rickey combined his artistic and engineering skills to create complex types of movement, utilizing harmonic and gyratory motion to expand the dynamic potential of kinetic art.
Rickey said that “motion, which we are all sensitive to, which we are all capable of observing without having to be taught, is a sensation that appeals to the senses just as color does. It has an equivalent of the spectrum, different kinds of types of motion. I think that one can, to a very considerable extent, isolate motion as a visual component and design with that.”
Park Avenue @ 56th Street
1972-1975, Stainless steel, 14’6” x 14’
Park Avenue @ 55th Street
1971, Stainless steel, 180” x 96”
Park Avenue @ 55th Street
1990, Stainless steel, 13’ x 10’6”
Park Avenue @ 55th-54th Streets
1964-1976, Stainless steel, 14’6” x 22’6”
Park Avenue @ 54th Street
1979, Stainless steel, 10’3” x 10’4”
Park Avenue @ 54th Street
2002, Stainless steel, 10’3” x 10’4”
Park Avenue @ 53rd Street
1989, Stainless steel, 18’10”
Park Avenue @ 53rd Street
1974, Stainless steel, 20’ x 13’8”
Park Avenue @ 52nd Street
1987-1990, Stainless steel, 17’8” x 6’
6th Avenue @ 48th Street
1998, Stainless steel, 25’ x 23’
High Line @ 27th Street
1966, Stainless Steel, 25’4”
High Line @ 27th Street
1966, Stainless steel, 10’6” x 30’
High Line @ 27th Street
1963-1975, Stainless steel and red paint, 36’ x 36’
Rickey NYC was developed by Maria Lizzi, Amanda Perry, Victoria Petway, Lisa Beth Podos, and Hilary Vlastelica.
Photographs of works on Park Avenue by Diego Flores, courtesy of Kasmin.
© George Rickey Foundation, Inc.