Life by Decade

1907

George Warren Rickey is born in South Bend, IN, on June 6 to Walter Rickey, a mechanical engineer working for Singer Sewing Machine Company, and Grace Landon Rickey, a graduate of Smith College. He is the third of six children and the only boy.

George Rickey, South Bend, IN, 1911.

George Rickey, South Bend, IN, late 1907–early 1908.

“We are told to choose the right grandparents. I did: besides my grandmother with the pencil there was my paternal grandfather, also George, the one clockmaker in Athol, Massachusetts. He could make the village clock run; seeing him wind up its weight in the tower is one of my earliest memories.”

George Rickey, East Chatham, NY, May 22, 1985. From George Rickey in South Bend. South Bend: Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame, 1985.

1913

The Rickey family moves to Helensburgh, Scotland, when George’s father Walter accepts a transfer to the Singer Factory in Clydebank.

George Rickey with his sisters, Jane and Kate, Helensburgh, Scotland, 1915.

George Rickey with his father, Walter, Helensburgh, Scotland, 1915.

World Events

Harry Brearly (U.K.) invents stainless steel.
Income Tax becomes law in the U.S. as the 16th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified.

Art Events

The Armory Show (International Exhibition of Modern Art) in New York is the first large exhibition of Modern Art in the U.S.
Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring receives its premiere in Paris.

1917

Rickey attends Larchfield School, Helensburgh, Scotland, until 1921. Poet W.H. Auden will teach at Larchfield School in the 1930s.

Rickey family, Helensburgh, Scotland, 1914.

World Events

Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates.
The Russian Revolution followed by the October Revolution brings Bolsheviks to power.

Art Events

Georgia O’Keeffe has her first solo show at Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery.
Hans Arp begins working on bas relief “earth forms.”
Gerrit Rietveldt designs The Red and Blue Chair, one of the first explorations of 3D work by the De Stijl movement.

1919

Art Events

To illustrate kinetics to his students and demonstrate that movement in real time creates the illusion of volumetric space, Naum Gabo creates Kinetic Sculpture (Standing Wave), one of the first truly kinetic sculptures.
The Bauhaus School opens in Weimar.
Vladimir Tatlin designs the Monument to the Third International; conceived as a symbol of modernity, the towering structure intended for Petrograd is never built.
The Constructivist movement begins.

1921

Rickey begins his secondary-school education at Trinity College, Glenalmond, Scotland, where he is influenced by teacher George Lyward.

George on family cutter, Thora, sailing the Firth of Lorne, Scotland, 1921.

‍

Portrait of Jane Rickey (1921, pencil on paper). George Rickey Estate.

George Rickey, Helensburgh, Scotland, c. 1921.

Rickey family, 1922.

World Event

Allies press for war reparations from Germany in the aftermath of World War I. Hyperinflation begins in the Weimar Republic (330 Marks=$1).

Art Event

Paul Klee begins teaching at the Bauhaus and continues through 1931.

Portrait of Jane Rickey (1921, pencil on paper). George Rickey Estate.

George Rickey, Helensburgh, Scotland, c. 1921.

Rickey family, 1922.

1925

Rickey cruises the Mediterranean aboard the SS Alpera with Captain David William Bone, the brother of artist Muirhead Bone.

George Rickey (seated center) with the Trinity College rugby team, Glenalmond, Scotland, c. 1924.

George Rickey (left), 1925.

1926

Rickey graduates from Trinity College, Glenalmond, Scotland, and subsequently begins studying modern history at Balliol College, University of Oxford, England.

Trinity College, Glenalmond, Scotland, undated.

Dining hall, Trinity College, Glenalmond, Scotland, undated.

Clarendon, Rickey family home, Helensburgh, Scotland.

Art Event

Wassily Kandinsky publishes Point and Line to Plane.

1927

Rickey crosses the Atlantic with Captain David William Bone and does so again the following year.

George Rickey, Identification card, 1927.

World Events

Charles Lindbergh makes the first non-stop solo flight from New York to Paris.
Vladimir Lenin dies and Joseph Stalin comes to power.

1928

In the spring Rickey attends evening classes at the Ruskin School of Drawing, Oxford, England. In the summer he visits Reinald Hoops in Heidelberg and lives in student housing while studying there. He visits Paris for the first time.

Beer hall, Heidelberg, Germany, 1928.

"My shy, serious, conservative New England heritage resonated to these revolutionary propositions and gave me the courage (or recklessness), self-confidence (or stubbornness) and imagination (or fantasy) to shun the business world my father held out to me, for a life of teaching and telling."

George Rickey, East Chatham, NY, May 22, 1985. From George Rickey in South Bend. South Bend: Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame, 1985.

Director Kevin McDonald. "The Moving World of George Rickey." Figment Films Ltd. in association with BBC Scotland, 1998.

World Event

Full voting rights for women are granted in the U.K.

Art Event

Naum Gabo teaches at the Bauhaus.

1929

Rickey receives his Bachelor of Arts degree from Balliol College, University of Oxford, England. He goes to Paris to study modern drawing and painting at the Académie L’Hôte and Académie Moderne. In the fall Rickey teaches English at the Gardiner School in Paris.

George Rickey (standing second from right) at a party, Paris, France, 1929.

World Event

Wall Street crashes on October 29 and the Great Depression begins.

Art Event

The Museum of Modern Art opens in New York.

1930

In the spring Rickey meets with Endicott Peabody and accepts a teaching position at the Groton School in Massachusetts.

In the summer he visits Reinald Hoops in Heidelberg and then travels to England. While crossing the English Channel from Paris to England, Rickey meets his future first wife, Susan Luhrs.

In the fall he begins teaching at the Groton School.

George Rickey, passport photo, 1930.

Art Event

Bill Max co-authors The Basis of Concrete Art, in which he advocates that the "hand" of the artist be almost undetectable in finished works and that concrete art may appear, in some instances, to have been made by a machine.

1931

In the summer Rickey travels by car across the U.S. with Susan Luhrs. The trip ends in San Francisco because the Golden Gate Bridge has not been completed.

Groton School faculty, George Rickey (seated middle row center), Groton, MA, c. 1931.

1932

Rickey teaches art courses in Quincy, Illinois, during the summer. He meets Philip Evergood.

“If you study something very closely, the truth you tell about it may sound implausible; maybe poetry is like that.”

“Some reflections: Selections from Writings by the Artist,” George Rickey exhibition catalogue (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1979).

Art Event

Naum Gabo takes part in Abstraction-Création, an association of abstract artists including Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky.

1933

Rickey leaves Groton and moves to New York. He marries Susan Luhrs at New York’s Riverside Church.

George Rickey and Susan Luhrs Rickey, 1933.

He spends September to February of the following year in Paris and travels through France and Spain. While in Paris, Rickey meets Alice B.Toklas in Gertrude Stein’s apartment. He also meets Delores Vanetti, with whom he continues a close friendship.

Rickey returns at one point to New York, where he has his first solo exhibition of paintings at Caz-Delbo Gallery.

Portrait of Louis Auchincloss, student at Groton School (1933, pencil on paper). George Rickey Estate.

Solo Exhibition

[Paintings], Caz-Delbo Gallery, New York.

World Events

The Nazi Party comes into power.
In the U.S. a series of programs that become known as the New Deal begins.
The 20th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is repealed, and prohibition comes to an end.

Art Events

Gaston Lachaise creates the sculpture Standing Woman.
The Bauhaus closes.
Thomas Hart Benton creates The Century of Progress murals in Chicago.

1934

Rickey travels in Germany during the spring and returns to New York from Paris.

He moves into a studio in New York.

Christmas card (1934, woodblock print). George Rickey Foundation.

Portrait of Dolores Vanetti Ehrenreich (1934, oil on canvas). Private collection.

Untitled (Still life) (1934, oil on panel). University of Notre Dame Archives.

Untitled (Paris street scene) (1934, pencil on paper). George Rickey Foundation.

1935

On May 22, George’s father, Walter Rickey, is killed in a car accident outside of Paris. Rickey’s mother Grace and sisters Elizabeth and Alison move back to the U.S.

Rickey moves into a studio on Union Square in New York, which he keeps until 1942. Within two years of Rickey’s arrival, Doris Lee, Arnold Blanch, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Morris Kantor, Harry Sternberg, and Rico LeBrun move into studios in the same building.

Rickey has his first solo museum exhibition of paintings at the Denver Art Museum.

*Warehouse and Lamp Post, New York City* (1935, gouache and pastel on paper). University of Notre Dame Archives.

Posthumous portrait of Walter Rickey (1935, oil on canvas). George Rickey Estate.

Solo Exhibition

[Paintings], Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO.

World Events

Nuremberg Laws established in Germany depriving Jews of citizenship.
The U.S. Congress passes the Social Security Act.
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) is established in the U.S.

Art Events

The WPA establishes the Federal Art Program, which continues until 1943.
Alexander Calder’s first museum show includes mobiles.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater is completed.
New York’s Museum of Modern Art holds a retrospective of the work of Gaston Lachaise.

1936

Rickey works for three months as editorial assistant at Newsweek.

Self-portrait (1936, oil on canvas). Whereabouts unknown.

1937

Rickey serves as artist-in-residence on a Carnegie grant at Olivet College in Olivet, MI.

In the summer he meets sculptor David Smith in Woodstock, NY, at a party thrown by Eddie Millman. Susan and George Rickey separate.

Portrait of Laura Berghorst Verplank, student at Olivet College (1937, oil on canvas). George Rickey Foundation.

Art Events

Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibit is held in Munich, Germany, where the Nazis include seventeen works by Paul Klee.
Picasso’s Guernica is completed.
Circle: International Survey of Constructivist Art, edited by artists Naum Gabo and Ben Nicholson and architect Leslie Martin, and designed by artist Barbara Hepworth, is published in London.

1938

In the spring, Rickey begins a second appointment as Artist-In-Residence at Olivet College, Olivet, MI, a position funded by the Carnegie Corporation. He begins work on the Olivet wet fresco mural project. He also travels throughout the Midwest on an educational tour for the Carnegie Corporation.

In this year, Rickey begins working with students Laura Verplank, Charles Fisk (the soon-to-be famed organ builder), Bill Dole, and others on a mural.

George Rickey demonstrates portrait painting, location unknown, 1938.

George Rickey works on his mural, Olivet College, Olivet, MI, 1938–1939.

World Events

Germany annexes Austria (The Anschluss).
The Munich Pact is signed giving the Czechoslovak Sudetenland to Germany.
British Prime Minister Chamberlain declares “I have returned from Germany with peace for our time.”

Art Events

Walter Gropius completes The Gropius House in Lincoln, MA, bringing the concepts of “International Modernism” to the U.S.

1939

Rickey paints a mural at the post office in Selinsgrove, PA, as part of the WPA Federal Art Project. He also completes a mural at Olivet College.

George Rickey mural at Olivet College (completed in 1939). Photos by Sue Topping, 2011.

George Rickey mural at the post office in Selinsgrove, PA.

Untitled sketch for Selinsgrove mural (Mother and child) (Undated, gouache on board). George Rickey Foundation.

Rickey travels to Mexico with Ulfert Wilke and Laura Verplank, and meets artist Lyonel Feininger.

In the fall and winter, Rickey rents a cabin in Fenville, MI. His marriage to Susan Luhrs ends in divorce.

Diego Rivera’s assistant, Antonio Pujol, instructs Rickey in mural fresco techniques, Mexico, 1939.

George Rickey and Laura Berghorst Verplank, Mexico, 1939.

World Event

Germany invades Poland. World War II begins.

1940

Rickey serves as acting director and curator of Kalamazoo Institute of Art in Kalamazoo, MI. He starts another position funded by the Carnegie Corporation as artist-in-residence at Knox College in Galesburg, IL, and begins a mural there.

Rickey travels through Mexico.

George Rickey works on his mural at Knox College, Galesburg, IL, 1940–1941.

Cartoon for Knox College mural (Undated, gouache on paper). Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame.

Group Exhibition

‍Art in a Democracy, American Artists Congress, New York.

World Events

The Blitz of London begins.
Paris falls to the Nazis on June 14.

Art Event

Isamu Noguchi’s News, a stainless steel bas-relief, is unveiled at Rockefeller Center.

1941

Rickey completes his mural at Knox College. He travels to Mexico with his sister Alison.

‍

George Rickey and his sister Alison in Mexico, 1941.

Rickey receives his M.A. from Balliol College, University of Oxford, England.

He moves to Pennsylvania where he organizes the Art Department at Muhlenberg College in Allentown.

George Rickey demonstrates portrait painting, location unknown, c. 1940–1941.

World Event

The Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor on December 7. The U.S. enters World War II.

1942

George Rickey is drafted and serves in the U.S. Army Air Force until 1945, stationed in Denver, CO.

George Rickey, U.S. Army Air Corps, undated (between 1942 and 1945).

Blackjack Session (1942, pen and ink on paper). Private collection.

Rickey offers Philip Evergood a temporary teaching position at Muhlenberg College.

Untitled (Muhlenberg College chapel and walkways) (1942, oil on board). University of Notre Dame Archives.

Art Events

Peggy Guggenheim opens the Art of this Century Gallery.
Albert Camus’ The Stranger is published.

1943

Rickey travels to New York state while on leave and visits Woodstock.

Source unknown (most likely the Denver Post), April 1943.

Art Event

Piet Mondrian’s painting, Broadway Boogie Woogie, is completed.

1945

The U.S. Army Air Force transfers Rickey from Denver, CO, to Loredo, TX. He makes his first mobile sculpture.

In the autumn, Rickey is discharged from the military and returns to New York where he takes art history courses at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University on the G.I. Bill.

George Rickey’s Army art appeared in various Armed forces publications (1944) and in Soldier Art, an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1945.

Art in the Armed Forces

G.I. Sketchbook

Army identification card, 1945.

“My sisters and I always had an A in drawing. Modelmaking and constructions are in our blood. I view theory and practice as belonging together, the one determines the other in my work. The immediate stimulus for the making of my first mobiles, however, came from the impressions and experiences I had in dealing with technical apparatus in the Air Corps.”

George Rickey from Eberdard Roters, “George Rickey: A Portrait.” Quoted in George Rickey in Berlin, 1967-1992, Berlinische Galerie.

‍

Self Portrait (1945, oil on canvas). Whereabouts unknown.

Kitchen Chair (1945, oil on board). George Rickey Foundation.

World Events

Germany surrenders unconditionally on May 7.
The U.S. bombs Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9.
Japan surrenders unconditionally on September 2.
The United Nations is founded.

Art Event

Jean-Paul Sartre visits New York.

1946

Rickey returns to teaching at Muhlenberg College and becomes chairman of the Art Department.

Rickey’s “La Civilisation du mouvement” is published in Jean-Paul Sartre’s journal Le Temps Modernes, Aug–Sep 1946.

Group Exhibition

‍Oil Paintings and Sculpture, Oakland Art Gallery, Oakland, CA.

*Edie* (1946, brush and black ink on paper). George Rickey Foundation.

World Event

The Truman Doctrine, an informal plan to contain Communism, is first articulated.

Art Events

Naum Gabo immigrates to the U.S.
Isamu Noguchi’s Kouros is shown for the first time.
Jean-Paul Sartre writes the catalogue for Alexander Calder’s Paris exhibition.

1947

George Rickey marries Edith (Edie) Leighton at Christ Church in New York. The two honeymoon in Woodstock, NY. In the fall, George studies etching under Mauricio Lasansky at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA.

Edith “Edie” Leighton, c. 1945.

George and Edie Rickey on their wedding day, New York, May 24, 1947.

George and Edie Rickey with Ulfert and Dorothy Wilke on their wedding day, Muscatine, IA, August 23, 1947.

Group Exhibitions

Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, now the New Orleans Museum of Art.
American Drawings for 1947, Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY.
Ohio Valley Oil and Watercolor Show, Ohio University, Athens, OH.
Ninth Annual West Virginia Regional Exhibition, Parkersburg Fine Art Center, Parkersburg, WV.

Sketch for Apollo and Daphne (1947, ink and watercolor on illustration board). George Rickey Foundation.

Apollo and Daphne (1947, etching with black ink). George Rickey Foundation.

World Event

Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe is enacted. The Cold War begins. The House Un-American Activities Committee begins investigating alleged American Communists.

1948

Rickey leaves his teaching position at Muhlenberg College and teaches at the University of Washington in Seattle.

In the fall he studies design at the Institute of Design in Chicago.

Studio, Institute of Design, Chicago, IL.

George and Edie Rickey, Bradford Woods, PA.

Group Exhibition

Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, now the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Lucretia in Prague (1948, oil on board). George Rickey Foundation.

Birthday Party (1947–1948, oil on board). George Rickey Foundation.

World Events

The U.S.S.R. blocks Western access to sectors of Berlin (Berlin Blockade), and Western powers begin the Berlin Airlift.
The United Nations declares the independence of the state of Israel on May 14 leading to the Arab-Iraeli War.

1949

Rickey spends seven months traveling through Europe.

Edie Rickey feeds the pigeons in St. Mark’s Square, Venice, Italy, 1949.

Portrait of Edie Rickey by Max Beckmann (1949, oil on canvas). St. Louis Art Museum.

He accepts a teaching position as associate professor of fine arts at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Rickey creates his first kinetic works in glass.

The Beggar and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov. Selected and edited by J.I. Rodale. Illustrated by George Rickey. Published by The Story Classics, Emmaus, PA, 1949.

Group Exhibition

‍One Hundred and Eight American Drawings, Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY.

World Events

The Berlin Blockade ends, and the Federal Republic of Germany and German Democratic Republic are created.
NATO is established.

Art Event

Alberto Giacometti creates Three Men Walking II.

1950

Rickey seriously begins making sculpture and creates his first kinetic works in metal.

He visits artist Mark Tobey in Seattle, WA.

“A machine is not an abstraction. Though it represents nothing, it lives and moves and has its being in space. In that respect, the analogy with painting cannot be made. Painting is a projection onto a flat surface. Sculpture, by its nature, is a ‘thing.’”

George Rickey from Selden Rodman, Conversations with Artists, New York (The Devin-Adair CO), 1957. Quoted in George Rickey in Berlin, 1967-1992, Berlinische Galerie.

Phoenix (1950, glass, steel wire, polychrome). Destroyed.

Self portrait (1950, etching with black ink). George Rickey Foundation.

George Rickey with Mark Tobey, Seattle, WA, 1950.

World Event

The Korean War begins.

1951

Rickey spends the summer traveling in Mexico.

In June, Rickey visits Calder in his Connecticut studio.

Alexander Calder at work in his Connecticut studio, 1951.

Group Exhibitions

Forty-fourth Annual Indiana Artist Exhibition, John Herron School of Art, Indianapolis, IN.
Fifth Old Northwest Territory Art Exhibit, Illinois State Fairgrounds, Springfield, IL.
American Sculpture 1951, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Contemporary American Sculpture, Watercolors and Drawings, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Pleiades (1950–1951, wire, steel, polychrome) included in the Fifth Old Northwest Territory Art Exhibit, Illinois State Fairgrounds, Springfield, IL (Aug 10–19, 1951).

Silverplume #2 (1951, remade 1961, wire, steel, polychrome). Private collection.

Art Event

Eduardo Chillida begins working in forged iron and calls his sculpture “a rebellion against gravity.”

1952

George and Edie spend the summer at Camp Treetops on Lake Placid in Upstate New York.

George invents Mobikit.

George brings the artist David Smith to Indiana University in Bloomington.

Advertisement for Rickey’s Mobikit, 1952–1954.

Assembled Mobikit.

Art department faculty (George Rickey standing center), Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, early 1950s.

“David Smith gave me my first and only welding lesson and the sound advice to be extravagant with materials. Gabo never taught me, but I have learned much from his Realist Manifesto of 1920 and from his work, in which I saw a lucid, sensitive poetry of space in form. I have learned from teaching and from certain students.”

George Rickey, “The Métier,” 1965, in George Rickey: Selected Works from the Estate 1954-2000, Marlborough Gallery New York, 2016. Article first published in “Contemporary Sculpture: Arts Yearbook,” The Art Digest, 1965.

David Smith painting The Banquet (1951), Bolton Landing, NY, 1951. Photo by David Smith © 2020 The Estate of David Smith / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

Group Exhibitions

147th Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA.
Forty-fourth Annual Indiana Artist Exhibition, John Herron School of Art, Indianapolis, IN.

World Event

Elizabeth II accedes to the throne.

1953

Stuart Ross Rickey is born on March 23 in Bloomington, IN.

George Rickey holding his son, Stuart, Bloomington, IN, 1953.

He is given his first solo museum exhibition of sculpture, Mobile Sculpture, at the John Herron School of Art Museum in Indianapolis, IN.

George Rickey Mobiles, The Little Gallery, Louisville, KY (Mar 14–April 8, 1953).

Solo Exhibitions

Mobile Sculpture, John Herron School of Art Museum, Indianapolis, IN.
The Little Gallery, Louisville, KY.

Group Exhibitions

American Sculpture, Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME.
Contemporary American Sculpture, Watercolors and Drawings, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

World Events

Joseph Stalin dies.
Senator Joseph McCarthy becomes chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations and begins investigating alleged American Communists.
Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay reach the summit of Mount Everest.

1954

In the spring George resigns from Indiana University in Bloomington. In the fall he travels through the American Midwest on a teaching tour funded by the Carnegie Corporation.

George Rickey with early Space Churn, c. 1954.

The Cocktail Party (1954, stainless steel, painted mild steel). Private collection. Photo by Mark Zaref.

Little Machine of Unconceived Use (1953–1954, stainless steel, bronze, black paint). George Rickey Foundation. Photo by Mark Zaref

Flag Waving Machine, Table Model (1954, stainless steel, brass, polychrome). Private collection.

Group Exhibitions

Fifth Annual Regional Art Exhibition, South Bend Art Association, South Bend, IN.
Momentum Mid-continental 1948–54, Art Institute of Design, Chicago, IL.
Forty-fourth Annual Indiana Artist Exhibition, John Herron School of Art, Indianapolis, IN.
One Hundred and Forty-Ninth Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA.

World Event

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown versus the Board of Education ruling desegregates public schools, and Civil Rights protests begin in many Southern states.

Art Events

Louise Nevelson produces her first series of wood landscape sculptures.
Jasper Johns makes his first Flag painting.
Robert Rauschenberg begins his series of Combines utilizing found objects.

1955

In the spring, Rickey becomes chairman of the Art Department and professor of art at Tulane University in New Orleans, LA, a position he will hold through 1959.

Ship #4 (Pennant Ship) (1955, stainless steel with pennant painted red). Private collection. Photo courtesy Marlborough Gallery.

Solo Exhibition

‍George Rickey: Machines, Kinetic Sculptures, Mobiles, Kraushaar Galleries, New York, NY.

Orenary (Space Churn Theme), 1955. Unique, Polychrome steel and brass, 42" x 8" x 7". Private collection. Video by Brad Daniels.

George Rickey: Machines, Kinetic Sculptures, Mobiles, Kraushaar Galleries, New York, (Jan 3–29, 1955).

World Events

African-American Rosa Parks is arrested after she refuses to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. Approximately 40,000 African-American bus riders boycott the Montgomery, Alabama, bus system on the first day of the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. The Boycotts continue from Dec 5, 1955, until Dec 20, 1956, lasting a total of 381 days.
Martin Luther King, Jr., rises to national prominence.
The military occupation of Germany ends, and Germany joins NATO.
The Republic of Austria is formed.

Art Events

Documenta I is held in Kassel, Germany.
Designed and begun in 1952, Isamu Noguchi’s Garden of Peace and Peace Fountain open at UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

1956

George Rickey brings David Smith and Clifford Still to Tulane University as visiting artists.

Edie Rickey wearing her Space Churn Hairpin (1956, sterling silver, enamel).

Diptych: The Seasons (1956, stainless steel, polychrome). Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame.

Solo Exhibition

Isaac Delgado Museum of Art (now New Orleans Museum of Art), New Orleans, LA.

Group Exhibition

‍151st Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA.

George Rickey: Kinetic Sculpture and Machines, Delgado Museum, New Orleans, LA (Jan 8–29, 1956).

World Events

The U.S. tests the first hydrogen bomb.
The Suez Crisis leads to Second Arab-Israeli War.

1957

The George Rickey family spends spring and summer at the American Academy in Rome, Italy.

George, Edie, and Stuart Rickey in George’s studio at the American Academy in Rome, Italy, 1957.

Rome with Hills (1957, pencil on paper). George Rickey Foundation.

Rickey’s sculpture is exhibited in Europe for the first time at Amerika-Haus in Hamburg, Germany.

The Baltimore Museum of Art acquires Rickey’s Seesaw & Carousel II.

‍

Plumage (1957, stainless steel, polychrome). Private collection. Photo by Marlborough Gallery.

George Rickey and student with the prototype for Omaggio a Bernini (1957, brass). Destroyed.

Plumage, 1957. Unique, Stainless steel and polychrome, 21" x 11" x 11". Private collection. Video by Brad Daniels.

‍

Group Exhibitions

Now in New Orleans, The Riverside Museum, New Orleans, LA.
Windblown Mobiles: Lovely Useless Motion, Amerika Haus, Hamburg, Germany.

World Event

The U.S.S.R. launches Sputnik.

1958

*U.N. II* (1954–1960, steel, aluminum, polychrome). Private collection. Photo by Mark Zaref.

“I had to develop a language, but what was I going to say with it? I did not want merely to set static art in motion, nor to describe the dynamic world around me in a series of moving images. I wanted the whole range of movement itself at my disposal, not in order to describe the world around me, but to be itself, performing in a world of its own.”

George Rickey, East Chatham, NY, May 22, 1985. From George Rickey in South Bend. South Bend: Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame, 1985.

Carousel Variation (Undated, c. 1958, graphite and colored marker on pieced on yellow lined paper). George Rickey Foundation.

World Event

Nikita Khrushchev assumes power in the U.S.S.R.

Art Events

The Museum of Modern Art in New York acquires Louise Nevelson’s Sky Cathedral.
Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building in New York is completed.

1959

Philip Leighton Rickey is born on March 21 in New Orleans, LA.

Edie Rickey holding baby Philip, Bradford Woods, PA, 1959.

The Rickey family spends their first summer at Hand Hollow in East Chatham, New York.

George Rickey travels through Mexico.

Portrait of George and Edith Rickey by Mark Berger (1959, egg tempera on canvas). Private collection. Photo by Achim Pahle.

Hand Hollow farmhouse (future home of the Rickeys), East Chatham, NY, 1957.

Waterplant (1959–1960, stainless steel). Private collection. Photo by Mark Zaref.

Solo Exhibition

‍Kinetic Sculptures, Kraushaar Galleries, New York, NY.

Group Exhibitions

Fifth Annual Drawing and Small Sculpture Show, Ball State Teachers College Art Gallery, Muncie, IN.
The New Landscape in Art and Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; traveling exhibition organized by American Federation of Art.
Recent Sculpture U.S.A, Museum of Modern Art, New York; travels to The Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; City Art Museum of St. Louis, MO; Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA.
Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, now the New Orleans Museum of Art.

World Event

Revolution occurs in Cuba.

Art Events

Ellsworth Kelly creates the first freestanding folded sculpture in his Rocker series.
Claes Oldenberg has his first show to include sculpture.
For the first time Peter Voulkos exhibits his stacked and cantilevered, glazed and painted ceramic sculptures.
The Frank Lloyd Wright designed Guggenheim Museum opens in New York.

1960

The Rickey family moves permanently to Hand Hollow in East Chatham, NY.

In the spring, George is awarded his first Guggenheim Fellowship, and he takes a sabbatical from Tulane University.

The Rickey family spends part of the summer in Santa Barbara, CA, before returning to Hand Hollow. George teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where Bill Dole serves as head of the art department. The Rickey and Dole families remain close friends throughout their lives.

The Montclair Art Museum in Montclair, NJ, acquires Windflower I.

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA, acquires Diptych--The Seasons I.

Carousel (1960, stainless steel, polychrome). George Rickey Foundation.

Solo Exhibitions

Kinetic Sculptures of George Rickey, Orleans Gallery, New Orleans, LA.
Kinetic Sculpture--George Rickey, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA.

Group Exhibitions

New Sculpture Now, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA; travels to Smith College in Northampton, MA.
A Sampling of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, Dallas Museum of Fine Art, Dallas, TX.
Paintings, Sculpture & Drawing from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Patrick B. McGinnis, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA.

George Rickey: Kinetic Sculptures, Orleans Gallery, New Orleans, LA (Jan 8–24, 1960).

World Events

John Fitzgerald Kennedy is elected President of the U.S.
Civil Rights boycotts and sit-ins begin in New Orleans.

Art Events

Anthony Caro begins working with David Smith and constructing sculptures by welding or bolting together pieces of steel such as I-beams, steel plates, and meshes, along with other “found” industrial objects.
Jasper Johns creates his first sculpture, Flashlight.

1961

In the spring, the Guggenheim Foundation renews Rickey’s Fellowship. He takes a second sabbatical from Tulane University, and in the fall he resigns from teaching there.

He begins teaching at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY, where he will teach until 1966. At RPI he meets Roland Hummel, an engineering professor at the School of Architecture. Rickey and Hummel begin a lifelong collaboration.

He meets Denise René and shows sculpture at her Paris gallery.

Rickey participates in an important international group exhibition of kinetic art, Bewogen Beweging, at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (in cooperation with Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; and Louisiana Museum, Humlebæk, Denmark).

In the summer Rickey begins work on his book, Constructivism.

Stuart and Philip Rickey, East Chatham, NY, c. 1961.

Tidal I (1961, stainless steel). Private collection.

“Types of motion available to me are, mostly, observable every day in our natural environment. In clouds, sea, falling leaves, waving grass, kits, sails, soaring birds, and flying fish, slamming doors and shutters, hurricanes, whirlwinds and sandstorms, sometimes silent, sometimes shuddering or roaring, sometimes passing through lips, reeds, or pipes as music, air moves on.”

George Rickey, East Chatham, NY, May 22, 1985. From George Rickey in South Bend. South Bend: Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame, 1985.

Interview I, 1961. Unique, Stainless steel, bronze and copper, 22" x 8" x 4". Private collection. Video by Brad Daniels.

‍

Solo Exhibitions

George Rickey Recent Sculpture, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ; travels to the Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK.
George Rickey: Kinetic Sculpture, Kraushaar Gallery, New York, NY.

Group Exhibitions

Bewogen Beweging, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (in cooperation with Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; and Louisiana Museum, Humlebæk, Denmark).
Mechanism and Organism, an International Sculpture Exhibition, New School for Social Research, New York.
Regional Exhibition of Artists of the Upper Hudson, Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY.
Magriel Collection of American Drawings, Isaac Delgado Museum of Art (now New Orleans Museum of Art), New Orleans, LA.

First Kinetic International: Bewogen, Bewegin, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (Mar 10–Apr 17, 1961).

George Rickey: Kinetic Sculpture, Kraushaar Gallery, New York (Oct 4–28, 1961).

World Events

Thirty miles of barbed wire appear overnight, from August 12 to 13, creating the Berlin Wall.
China’s Great Leap Forward begins and ultimately results in the death of 20 million.

Art Events

George Segal creates Man at a Table, his first sculpture using bandages dipped in plaster.
Mark di Suvero creates his first large outdoor pieces incorporating wooden timbers, tires, scrap metal, and structural steel.
David Smith makes the first of 28 sculptures that he calls Cubi.

*Cubi XII* and *Cubi X* in the background (1963), Bolton Landing, NY, 1963. Photo by David Smith © 2020 The Estate of David Smith / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

1962

During the summer George travels to Germany for an exhibition of his work, Rickey Kinetische Sulpturen (Sculpture in Motion) at Galerie Springer in Berlin.

Stuart with Summer III (1962-1963, stainless steel), East Chatham, NY, 1963. Private collection.

Solo Exhibitions

Rickey Kinetische Sulpturen (Sculpture in Motion), Galerie Springer, Berlin; travels to Altbau Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf.
Rickey, Primus-Stuart Galleries, Los Angeles.

Group Exhibition‍

‍George Rickey Mobiles, Kurt Kranz Kinetische Graphik, Galerie Anna Roepcke, Wiesbaden, Germany.

World Events

The U.S.S.R. deploys ballistic missiles in Cuba leading to a confrontation with the U.S. known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, which lasts from October 14 through 28.
Tulane University desegregates.

1963

George’s mother, Grace Landon Rickey, dies on March 22 in Schenectady, NY.

In the spring he spends a week at Yaddo working on his book, Constructivism.

He participates in the exhibition, Sculpture in the Open Air at Battersea Park, London. For this show twenty American sculptors are chosen by the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

George visits Naum Gabo and Josef Albers in Connecticut.

George Rickey with Naum Gabo, Middlebury, CT, 1963.

George writes and publishes in Art Journal “The Morphology of Movement: A Study of Kinetic Art,” in which he outlines the sources, principles, trends, and difficulties of kinetic art.

"In art discovery is not enough. Pioneering in a new idiom, with new material, even with a new aesthetic (or a non-aesthetic) does not make it art, it makes it pioneering."

“The Morphology of Movement: A Study of Kinetic Art.” Art Journal, vol. 22, no. 4 (Summer 1963): 220-31. Reprinted in The Nature of Art and Motion, Grgory Kepes, ed. (New York: George Braziller, 1965): 81-115.

In the fall George travels to Europe, and he is asked to participate in Documenta III.

He participates in a conference on architectural uses of stainless steel at Lehigh University’s Department of Fine Arts in Bethlehem, PA.

George unveils a major installation at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Germany, Twenty-Four Lines (1963, stainless steel).

Twenty-Four Lines (1963, stainless steel). Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany.

Rickey family, East Chatham, NY, 1963.

Solo Exhibitions

George Rickey Kinetic Sculptures, Berkshire Art Center, Pittsfield, MA; travels to Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL.
George Rickey, Dartmouth College’s Hopkins Center, Hanover, NH; travels to Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA.

Group Exhibition

Sculpture in the Open Air, Battersea Park, London.

World Events

John Fitzgerald Kennedy visits Berlin and delivers his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech on June 26.
On August 28, as part of the March on Washington, D.C., 250,000 people assemble at the Lincoln Memorial for Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
An assassin shoots and kills John Fitzgerald Kennedy on November 22 in Dallas, TX.
Betty Friedan publishes The Feminist Mystique.

Art Event

Dan Flavin unveils Diagonal of Personal Ecstasy, his first fluorescent light sculpture, which he dedicates to Brancusi.

1964

Alfred Barr and Dorothy Miller from the Museum of Modern Art in New York visit George in East Chatham, NY.

The Whitney Museum of American Art acquires Omaggio a Bernini II (1958, stainless steel).

George participates in Documenta III in Kassel, Germany.

Documenta III, Museum Fridericianum, Orangerie, Kassel, Germany (Jun 27–Oct 5, 1964).

Two Lines Temporal I (1964, stainless steel) and Sedge IV (1961–1964, stainless steel) at Documenta III, Museum Fridericianum, Orangerie, Kassel, Germany (Jun 27–Oct 5, 1964).

Landscape III Variation II (1964, stainless steel) at Documenta III, Museum Fridericianum, Orangerie, Kassel, Germany (Jun 27–Oct 5, 1964).

Solo Exhibitions

Staempfli Gallery, New York.
George Rickey/Kinetic Sculptures, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA.

Group Exhibitions

Zero=0=nul, Galerie Delta, Rotterdam,The Netherlands.
Mouvement 2, Galerie Denise Rene, Paris.
Movement, Hanover Gallery, London.
On the Move, Howard Wise Gallery, New York.
Documenta III, Kassel, Germany.
Annual Exhibition 1964: Contemporary American Sculpture, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

George Rickey: Kinetic Sculpture, Staempfli Gallery, New York (Oct 20–Nov 7, 1964).

George Rickey: Kinetic Sculptures, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (Mar 14–Apr 26, 1964).

World Events

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution increases U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
U.S. Congress passes Civil Rights Act.
Race riots occur in numerous U.S. cities.

Art Events

Andy Warhol completes his first sculpture project, Brillo Soap Pads Boxes.
Donald Judd creates his first floor box structure and first wall-mounted sculpture; he publishes Specific Objects; and he begins delegating to professional artisans and manufacturers the fabrication of his work based on his drawings.
Mark Rothko begins work on 14 murals for the Rothko Chapel in Houston, TX.

1965

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY, acquires Peristyle— Five Lines.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York acquires Two Lines Temporal I.

*Two Red Lines* (1963–1975), stainless steel with red paint). George Rickey Foundation.

“The artist finds waiting for him, as subject, not the trees, not the flowers, not the landscape, but the waving of branches and the trembling of stems, the piling up or scudding of clouds, the rising and setting and waxing and waning of heavenly bodies.”

George Rickey, “The Morphology of Movement: A Study of Kinetic Art,” Art Journal 22 (Summer 1963): 228.

Solo Exhibition

Staempfli Gallery, New York.

Group Exhibitions

Aktuel 65-Nouvelle Tendance-recherche continuelle, Galerie Aktuel, Berlin.
Kinetic and Optic Art Today, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY.
Nul negentienhonderd vijf en zestig, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Zero avant-garde, Galleria del Cavallino, Venice, Italy.
Art et Mouvement, Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Etats-Unis Sculptures du XXe Siècle, Musée Rodin, Paris.
Licht und bewegung/kinetische kunst im garten: neue tendenzen der architektur, Kunsthalle, Bern, Switzerland.
Lumière Mouvement et Optique, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium.
Art in Science, Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY.
Amerikanische Plastik USA 20.Jahrhundert, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (Kunstverein Berlin) and Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden, Germany.

George Rickey assembles Crucifera IV (1965, stainless steel) in East Chatham, NY, 1965. (The work is now in the collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art.)

World Events

The U.S. deploys its first combat units to Vietnam.
The U.S. Congress establishes the Medicaid and Medicare programs.
Martin Luther King Jr. leads the Selma to Montgomery march, March 7 to 25.
The Watts Riot or the Watts Rebellion takes place in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles from August 11 to 16.

Art Events

Walter De Maria begins working in metal.
Eva Hesse begins working in latex, fiberglass, and plastics.
Donald Judd creates his first floor box sculpture using plexiglass.

1966

George Rickey resigns from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, leaving teaching to devote all of his time to making art.

He serves as a visiting artist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH.

Rickey creates Crucifera, his largest outdoor work to date.

George Rickey works on Nuages IV (1966–1968, stainless steel) in his studio at Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 1966.

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., acquires Three Red Lines (1966–1967, stainless steel painted red).

The DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA, acquires 3 Lines— Eighteen Feet.

The Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller in Otterlo, The Netherlands, acquires Two Vertical Three Horizontal Lines.

Three Red Lines (1966–1967, stainless steel painted red) at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.

Three Red Lines (1966–1967, stainless steel painted red) at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C. [Artist of the postcard unknown.]

Solo Exhibitions‍

George Rickey Sixteen Years of Kinetic Sculpture, Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Lines and Planes, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH.

Group Exhibitions

‍Directions in Kinetic Sculpture, University Art Museum, University of California at Berkeley, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA.
Kinetic Currents, San Francisco Museum of Art (now SFMOMA), San Francisco, CA.
Twentieth-Century Sculpture, University Art Museum, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM.
Seven Decades—Cross Currents in Modern Art, Cordier & Ekstrom, Inc., New York.
Sculptures of the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Rijksmuseum KröllerMüller, Otterlo, The Netherlands.
Scuola Grande di San Teodoro, Salone Internazionale Dei Giovani, Venice, Italy.
Outdoor Sculpture ’66, DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA.
Sculpture from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Max Wasserman, Hayden Gallery and Courtyard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
Contemporary Art—Acquisitions 1962–1965, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY.
Mouvement 2, Galerie Denise Rene, Paris.
Whitney Annual Exhibition 1966: Sculpture and Prints, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

*Peristyle II* (1966, stainless steel). Estate of George Rickey.

Art Events

Alberto Chillida begins his series of sculptures known as Abesti Gogora.
Ellsworth Kelly creates his first work on an irregular, angled, or shaped canvas entitled Yellow Piece.
The Guggenheim Museum commissions Ellsworth Kelly to create his steel sculpture, Wright Curve.
Edward Kienholz’s assemblage, Back Seat Dodge ‘38, creates an uproar when it is shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles.

1967

In January the Rickey family travels to Berlin.

In the spring George teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as a Regents Lecturer.

George Braziller, Inc., publishes George’s book, Constructivism.

*Constructivism: Origins and Evolution* by George Rickey (New York: Braziller, 1967).

“I do not claim to be a Constructivist. Yet I respect the humility, rigor, self-effacement and regard for object-rather-than-process which characterized early Constructivist work and gave meaning to the 'real' in Gabo’s Realist Manifesto.”

George Rickey, “The Métier,” 1965, in George Rickey: Selected Works from the Estate 1954-2000, Marlborough Gallery New York, 2016. Article first published in “Contemporary Sculpture: Arts Yearbook,” The Art Digest, 1965.

Nuages IV (1966–1968, stainless steel) above the dining room table, East Chatham, NY, c. 1967. Estate of George Rickey.

The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, presents Rickey’s work in a solo exhibition, Recent Kinetic Sculpture.

Six Lines in Parallel Planes is installed at the State Employment Building in Albany, NY.

The Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, NY, acquires Six Lines in a T (1965–1966, stainless steel).

The Oakland Art Museum, Oakland, CA, acquires Two Red Lines II.

Edie Rickey with *Six Lines in a T* (1965–1966, stainless steel). Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY.

George Rickey installs Ten Rotors Ten Cubes (1964-1966, stainless steel) at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, 1967.

Single Plane (1967, stainless steel). George Rickey Foundation.

Solo Exhibitions

Recent Kinetic Sculpture, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN.
Staempfli Gallery, New York.

Group Exhibitions

Slow-Motion: An Exhibition of Kinetic Art, Douglas College, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ.
Licht Bewegung Farbe, Kunsthalle, Nurenberg, Germany.
Biennale 1969 Nürnberg—Konstruktive Kunst: Elemente und Prinzipien, Nürnberg, Germany.
American Sculpture of the Sixties, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA.
Light, Motion and Sound in the New Art, Newark Museum of Art, Newark, NJ.
Vom Konstruktivismus zur Kinetik 1917 bis 1967, Galerie Denise Rene, Paris/Hans Mayer, Krefeld Ostwall, and Modern Art Museum, Munich, Germany.
Art et Mouvement, Musée D’Art Contemporain, Montréal, Canada.
Jewelry by Contemporary Painters and Sculptors, Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Sculpture in Environment, New York Public Library, New York.
Guggenheim International Exhibition 1967: Sculptures from Twenty Nations, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; travels to Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, Montréal, Canada.
Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA.
Mouvement 2, Galerie Denise Rene, Paris.

*George Rickey: Recent Kinetic Sculpture*, Staempfli Gallery, New York (May 23–Jun 17, 1967); travels to Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (Jul 23–Aug 27, 1967).

World Events

The 1967 Detroit Riot, also known as the 12th Street Riot, is the bloodiest incident in the "Long, hot summer of 1967.”
The Six-Day War, also known as the June War, 1967 Arab–Israeli War, or Third Arab–Israeli War, is fought from June 5 to 10 by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.

Art Events

Louise Nevelson has her first retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Philip Evergood paints a portrait of Edith Leighton Rickey.
Mark Rothko completes the Rothko Chapel in Houston, TX.
Richard Serra makes his first process-based works from molten lead hurled in large splashes against the wall of a studio or exhibition space.

1968

Rickey participates in the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (the German Academic Exchange Service Artists-in-Berlin Program).

George sets up a studio in Berlin where he will work until 1995.

George Rickey at work in his Berlin studio, 1968–1969.

Two Broken Lines Horizontal (1968, stainless steel). Private collection.

Solo Exhibition

‍George Rickey Kinetic Sculpture, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN.

Group Exhibitions

From the Informal to the New Structure, 34 Biennale Internationale d’Arte, Venice, Italy.
Plus by Minus: Today’s Half-Century, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY.
Documenta IV, Kassel, Germany.
From Constructivism to Kinetic Art, London Arts—Detroit Gallery, Detroit, MI.
1968 Annual Exhibition of American Art: Sculpture, Whitney Museum of Art, New York.

Major Installation

‍Four Lines Oblique Gyratory, commissioned by Henckel GmbH, Düsseldorf, Germany.

Space Churn Steel (1968, stainless steel with red paint) at Documenta IV, Kassel, Germany (Jun 27–Oct 6, 1968).

Documenta IV, Kassel, Germany (Jun 27–Oct 6, 1968).

Maquette (with dolls) of Four Planes Hanging (1968, stainless steel) for Documenta IV, Kassel, Germany (Jun 27–Oct 6, 1968).

World Events

Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. are assassinated.
The Democratic National Convention in Chicago is marked by riots.
A seven week-long period of civil unrest occurs in Paris, France.
Richard M. Nixon is elected President of the U.S.
An ethno-nationalist conflict known as “the Troubles” begins in Northern Ireland.

Art Events

Serra creates “prop pieces” by cutting, propping, or stacking sheets of lead, resulting in structures supported by their own weight.
Kenneth Snelson creates Needle Tower, a tower of aluminum tubes held together by stainless steel cables in a demonstration of “tensegrity”--the melding of tension and structural integrity.
James Turrell constructs his works known as Shallow Space.

1969

Once again, Rickey participates in the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (the German Academic Exchange Service Artists-in-Berlin Program).

Rickey travels to Paris, returns to the U.S., and then travels to Amsterdam, Munich, and Frankfurt.

He works on the model for a project of large rectangles in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

He travels to Osaka, Japan, to prepare for Expo ‘70.

George Rickey installs Space Churn with Squares (1969, stainless steel) for Expo 70, Osaka, Japan.

Space Churn Steel (1968, stainless steel with red paint) installed in 1969 at Eaglebrook School, Deerfield, MA.

George and Edie Rickey, Osaka, Japan, 1969.

Solo Exhibitions

George Rickey, Haus am Waldsee, Berlin.
George Rickey, Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
George Rickey Mobile Skulpturen, Kunstverein, Munich, Germany.
Staempfli Gallery, New York.

Group Exhibitions

Kunst als Spiel, Spiel als Kunst, Stätische Kunsthalle, Recklinghausen, Germany.
Report on the Sixties, Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO.
Sculptures by George Rickey and James Seawright, New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ.
Nagare, Bill, Rickey, Tokyo Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.
Konstruktive Kunst: Elemente und Prinzipien (1969 Biennale), Kunstahalle Nüremberg, Nüremberg, Germany.

Major Installations

Space Churn with Squares, National Memorial Museum of Expo, Osaka, Japan.
Four Squares in a Square, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
Two Lines Oblique, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA.
Space Churn—Steel, Eaglebrook School, Deerfield, MA.
Twenty-four Lines, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
N-Lines Horizontal II Hanging, The Tate Gallery, London.

George Rickey with Werner Haftmann, director of the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany, at the installation of *Four Squares in a Square* (1969, stainless steel).

George Rickey, Haus am Waldsee, Berlin, Germany (Feb 14–Mar 30, 1969).

Two Lines Vertical Hague (1965, stainless steel) at the 34 Biennale Internationale d’Arte, Venice, Italy (Jun 22–Oct 1968).

World Events

The first major gay rights event, the Stonewall Riots, occurs in New York.
Apollo 11 lands on the moon.

Art Events

Princeton University commissions Nevelson’s first monumental steel sculpture.
The first public artwork funded by the Art in Public Places program of the National Endowment for the Arts, Alexander Calder’s La Grande Vitesse, is installed in Grand Rapids, MI.

1970

Rickey is now dividing his time each year between East Chatham, NY, and Berlin.

In the spring Rickey is awarded an honorary degree, Doctor of Fine Arts, by Knox College in Galesburg, IL.

Through the years George and Edie Rickey have built a formidable collection of “constructivist” art work. The University Art Gallery at the State University of New York at Albany mounts the exhibition, Constructivist Tendencies: Selections from the Collection of George and Edith Rickey. In addition to items from their collection, the traveling exhibition includes several works by Rickey.

Constructivist Tendencies: Selections from the Collection of George and Edith Rickey, various venues (Aug 1970–Apr 1972).

Solo Exhibitions

Henry Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
Staempfli Gallery, New York.

Group Exhibitions

Noguchi & Rickey & Smith, Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington, IN.
Annual Exhibition of American Art: Contemporary American Sculpture, Whitney Museum of Art, New York, NY.
Constructivist Tendencies: Selections from the Collection of George and Edith Rickey, University Art Gallery, State University of New York, Albany, NY.

Major Installations

Two Planes Vertical Horizontal II, Yale University, New Haven, CT.
Space Churn with Spheres, Neue Heimat, Perlach, Munich, Germany.

Expo 70, Osaka, Japan (Mar 15–Sep 13, 1970).

Noguchi & Rickey & Smith, Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington, IN (Nov 8–Dec 13, 1970).

Art Events

Oldenberg’s first public sculpture, Three Way Plug, is commissioned by Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH.
In April Robert Smithson constructs his earthwork sculpture, Spiral Jetty.
James Turrell begins work on his Skyscape series.

1971

Rickey for a third time participates in the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (the German Academic Exchange Service Artists-in-Berlin Program).

He travels to Rotterdam, Bellingham (WA), San Francisco, Albuquerque, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Amsterdam, London, and Glasgow.

George Rickey with Roland Hummel, the engineer and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professor with whom he collaborated for over thirty years.

"I think I know what I’m doing."

George Rickey Retrospective Exhibition 1951-71. Los Angeles: UCLA Art Council. Los Angeles, 1971.

Solo Exhibitions

George Rickey Retrospective Exhibition 1951–71, UCLA Art Galleries, University of California, Los Angeles, CA; travels to Palm Springs Desert Museum, CA; Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, TX; Wichita Art Museum, KS; Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE; The Arts Club of Chicago, IL; The Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; The San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, CA.
Staempfli Gallery, New York.

Major Installations

Two Rectangles Vertical Gyratory, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Two Lines Oblique, Whatcom Museum of History and Art, Bellingham, WA.
Two Planes Vertical Horizontal II, Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY.
Three Squares Gyratory I, Glasgow University, Scotland.
Two Lines Oblique--Jerusalem, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Two Rectangles Vertical Gyratory Down, Klinikum, Freie Universität, Berlin, West Germany.

Installation of *Two Rectangles Vertical Gyratory* (1969, stainless steel) in Rotterdam. Collection of the City of Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Installation of Space Churn with Octagon (1971, stainless steel), City Hall Plaza, Boston, MA, for Sculpture for Public Places (Oct 2–Nov 14, 1971).

George Rickey with Two Rectangles Vertical Gyratory (1969, stainless steel).

Installation of Two Rectangles Vertical Gyratory Up III (1970, stainless steel) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, 1971.

1972

Rickey receives the Fine Arts Award from the American Institute of Architects.

He is awarded the honorary degree, Doctor of Letters, by Williams College in Williamstown, MA.

Rickey moves his Berlin studio to Bundesplatz.

George and Edie donate their Constructivist collection to The Neuberger Museum at the State University of New York in Purchase.

Rickey travels in Mexico.

At the Rickeys’ by Don Mochon (Undated, print). George Rickey Foundation.

Solo Exhibitions

Sculpture by George Rickey, Museum of Art, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA.
Staempfli Gallery, New York.

Group Exhibitions

Drawing in Space: 19 American Sculptors, The Katonah Gallery, Katonah, NY.
The Non-Objective World, Annely Juda Fine Art, London, U.K.; travels to Galerie Liatowitsch, Basel, Switzerland; Galleria Milano, Milan, Italy.
Geplante Ausstellungen, KestnerGesellschaft, Hannover, West Germany.

Major Installations

Two Planes Vertical Horizontal II, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.
Two Lines Oblique, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA.

World Events

Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland; On January 30, British soldiers shoot 26 unarmed civilians during a protest march against internment without trial.
During the Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, eight members of the Palestinian terrorist group, Black September, take nine members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage, killing them along with a West German police officer in the Munich Massacre.
Richard Nixon lands in Peking becoming the first U.S. President to visit China.
The Watergate scandal, which leads to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon, begins with the burglary on June 17 of the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate office building in Washington, D.C.

Art Events

Louise Nevelson gives Night Presence IV to the City of New York and it is installed on Park Avenue between 91st and 92nd streets.
Michael Heizer begins work on City (in Garden Valley, Lincoln Co., NV), which is comprised of five Complexes.
Ellsworth Kelly begins creating large-scale outdoor sculpture using unvarnished steel, aluminum or bronze.
Roy Lichtenstein receives his first public art commission from St. Mary’s, GA, for the sculpture Lamp.

1973

The Rickeys move their living quarters in Berlin to Bundesplatz. The family spends the summer in Venice, Italy.

George travels to Skowhegan, ME, to receive the Painting and Sculpture Medal from the Skowhegan School.

He is awarded the Dillon Visiting Fellow Award by the Groton School in Groton, MA.

He receives the honorary degree, Doctor of Letters, from Union College in Schenectady, NY.

George Receives Award from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, 1973.

Six Triangles Hexagon (1973, stainless steel). Private collection.

“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.”

George Rickey, quoted in Jeanne Siegal, Artwords: Discourse on the 60s and 70s (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1985), 141.

The Louisiana Museum in Humlebæk, Denmark, acquires One Up One Down Oblique IV, and it is installed in 1976.

The Institute of Art in Kalamazoo, MI, acquires Four Lines Oblique Gyratory IV (1973, stainless steel).

*Four Lines Oblique Gyratory Square IV* (1973, stainless steel). Kalamazoo institute of the Arts.

Garden of the Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany, during George Rickey (Nov 21, 1973–Feb 4, 1974).

George Rickey, Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany (Nov 21, 1973–Feb 4, 1974).

Solo Exhibitions

George Rickey, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover, Germany.
Nationalgalerie Berlin, Germany.
Galerie Buchholz, Munich, Germany.

World Events

The Yom Kippur War, Ramadan War, or October War, also known as the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, is fought from October 6 to 25 by a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria against Israel.
An oil crisis causes gas prices to rise by 70%.
With its Roe v. Wade decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution of the U.S. protects a pregnant woman's liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction.

1974

Rickey receives the honorary degree, Doctor of Fine Arts, from Indiana University in Bloomington, IN.

He is elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters (now the American Academy of Arts and Letters).

The Neuberger Museum of Art at the State University of New York in Purchase acquires Two Lines Oblique Down.

Ed Kienholz casts Edie Rickey, Berlin, Germany, 1974.

Edie Rickey with her completed plaster cast in Ed and Nancy Kienholz’s The Art Show, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Germany, 1977.

Rickey family, Berlin, Germany, December 26, 1974.

Solo Exhibition

Sculpture of George Rickey, Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA.

Group Exhibition

Monumenta: A Biennial Exhibition of Outdoor Sculpture, Newport, RI.

Major Installations

Two Lines Oblique, Empire State Plaza, Albany, NY.
Twelve Triangles Hanging, City Hall, Fort Worth, TX.

Installation of Two Lines Oblique (1971, stainless steel) at the Empire State Plaza, Albany, NY.

World Events

Richard M. Nixon resigns from the U.S. Presidency on August 8.
Gerald R. Ford becomes President of the U.S. and pardons Nixon of all federal crimes.

1975

Rickey receives the Indiana Arts Commission Award for Sculpture.

The Rickey family travels to Mexico.

George and Edie Rickey with Christo, Berlin, 1975.

The Rickey apartment/studio, Berlin, 1975. Photo by Achim Pahle.

Solo Exhibitions

George Rickey, Lincoln Center Plaza and Staempfli, New York.
George Rickey, CSR Gallery, New York; travels to Gimpel & Hanover Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland; Gimpel Fils Gallery, London.

Group Exhibition

Veranneman Foundation, Kruishoutem, Belgium.

Major Installations

Two Lines Oblique Down III, Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN.
Two Vertical Two Horizontal Lines, Schipol Airport, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Three Squares Gyratory II, Münster, West Germany.

George Rickey, Fordham University Plaza at Lincoln Center (Outdoors) and Staempfli Gallery (Indoors), New York (Apr 22–May 13, 1975).

George Rickey installs Three Squares Gyratory II (1971, stainless steel) in Münster, Germany.

Installation of Two Vertical Two Horizontal Lines (1974, stainless steel) at Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1975.

World Events

The Vietnam War ends with the fall of Saigon.
Khmer Rouges comes to power in Cambodia.

1976

Rickey travels to Honolulu, HI, and Tokyo, Japan.

“Technology is not art but every art has its technology... I do not develop technology for its own sake or to cause wonder, only in response to my felt need.”

Introduction and text. George Rickey: Kinetische Objekte und Technik. Bielefeld, Germany: Kunsthalle Bielefeld, 1976.

Solo Exhibition

George Rickey Kinetische Objekte, Material and Technik, Kunsthalle der Stadt Bielefeld, West Germany.

Group Exhibitions

Kinetic Columns/Ulfert Wilke Paintings, E.P. Gurewitsch Works of Art, Inc., New York.
Bicentennial Celebration—Sculpture 76, Greenwich Arts Council, Greenwich, CT.
Carl Schlosberg Fine Arts, Sherman Oaks, CA.
A Selection of American Art: The Skowhegan School 1946–1976, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA.
American Welders 1959–1960, Zabriskie Gallery, New York.
200 Years of American Sculpture, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Mirages of Memory: 200 Years of Indiana Art, Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN.

Major Installations

Two Open Rectangles Excentric, Federal Courthouse, Honolulu, HI.
Two Lines Vertical--Hakone, Hakone Open Air Museum, Hakone, Japan.
Two Open Rectangles Excentric VI, Middlebury College, Middelbury, VT.

World Event

Cultural Revolution in China, formally the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, ends.

Art Events

Jean-Michel Basquiat and Al Diaz begin graffiti work under the pseudonym SAMO.
Donald Judd receives a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for a public sculpture at Northern Kentucky University in the Kentucky suburbs of Cincinnati, OH.

Two Open Rectangles Excentric (1976, stainless steel), Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole Federal Building, Honolulu, HI.

1977

Rickey travels to Berlin, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Yucatan.

He is awarded the Certificate of Appreciation in Art and Architecture from the General Services Administration of the U.S.

Harry N. Abrams, Inc., publishes Nan Rosenthal’s book, George Rickey.

Front cover of Nan Rosenthal’s *George Rickey* (New York: Abrams, 1977).

George Rickey: Drawings for Sculpture, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA (Nov 11–Dec 11, 1977).

George Rickey, Galerie Espace, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (Mar 12–Apr 9, 1977).

Solo Exhibitions

Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, New York.
George Rickey Drawings for Sculpture, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA.
Makler Gallery, Philadelphia, PA.
George Rickey Mobile Skulpturen, Städtlische Galerie im Städelschen Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt, Germany.

Group Exhibitions

Modern Sculpture— American Works in West Coast Collections, Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery, College Five, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA.
Wave Hill Sculpture Garden Inaugural Exhibition, Wave Hill Center Sculpture Garden, Riverdale, Bronx, NY.
Two Decades 1957-1977—American Sculpture from Northwest Collections, Museum of Art, Washington State University, Seattle, WA.
Garden Sculpture Exhibition, Carl Schlosberg Fine Arts, Sherman Oaks, CA.

Major Installations

Four Open Rectangles, Technische Universität, Ulm, Germany.
Two Lines Up Excentric V, Kiel, Germany.
Four Lines Oblique Gyratory—Square, Huntington Galleries, Huntington, WV.

George Rickey, Städel Museum (Städelsches Kunstinstitut), Frankfurt am Main, Germany (May 5–Oct 30, 1977).

Installation of Four Open Rectangles Excentric Gyratory Gyratory (1976, stainless steel), Universitätsbauamt Ulm, Germany. Kunstpfad Universität Ulm, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

World Events

Control of the Panama Canal returned to Panama.
First personal computers become available.
President Jimmy Carter grants amnesty for Vietnam War “draft dodgers.”

Art Events

Walter De Maria creates Lightning Field, commissioned and maintained by the Dia Art Foundation.
Mark Di Suvero begins work on Arikidea and completes it in 1982.
Naum Gabo dies.

1978

Rickey travels to Copenhagen, Zurich, Berlin, and Paris.

He receives the honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, from York University in Toronto, Canada.

Lecture by George Rickey at Ed Kienholz’s Faith and Charity in Hope Gallery, Hope, ID, 1978.

George and Edie Rickey with Swiss architect, artist, and designer, Max Bill at Gimpel & Hanover, Zurich.

Solo Exhibitions

Fairweather-Hardin Gallery, Chicago, IL.
Galerie Kasahara, Osaka, Japan.
Sculpture by George Rickey, K & B Plaza, New Orleans, LA.
George Rickey—Mobile Skulpturen, Gimpel & Hanover Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland.

Group Exhibitions

Monuments and Monoliths—A Metamorphosis, Nassau County Museum of Fine Arts, Roslyn, NY.
Outdoor Sculptors of the Berkshires, Chesterwood, Stockbridge, MA.
Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York.

Major Installations

Four Open Rectangles Excentric, New Orleans, LA (later relocated to Sidney and Walda Bestoff Sculpture Garden, New Orleans Museum of Art).
Two Open Rectangles VI Square Section, Peoria Airport, Peoria, IL.
Two Open Rectangles Excentric VII, Triangular Section, Bochum University, Berlin, West Germany.

Invitation to the opening of George Rickey: Mobile Skulpturen, Gimpel & Hanover Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland (Feb 25–Apr 1, 1978).

Sculpture by George Rickey, K&B Plaza, New Orleans, LA (Sep 1978).

World Events

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign a pair of political agreements, the Camp David Accords, on September 17 following twelve days of secret negotiations at Camp David.
On November 18, 918 individuals die as the result of a massacre at various locations in Guyana orchestrated by cult leader Jim Jones.
Louise Joy Brown is born July 25, the first human to have been born after conception by in vitro fertilization.

1979

Rickey travels with sons, Stuart and Philip, to the Greek island of Crete.

Rickey receives the Creative Arts Award Medal from Brandeis University in Waltham, MA.

George Rickey with his sons, Stuart and Philip, Crete, Greece, 1979.

“Since the design of the movement is paramount, shape, for me, should have no significance.”

George Rickey, Skupturen, Material, Technik. Berlin: Amerika Haus, 1979.

Edie Rickey cutting the ribbon at the “opening” of *Two Rectangles Vertical Gyratory IV* (1978, stainless steel), at the PNC Building in Cincinnati, OH, 1979.

George Rickey: Retrospective, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art, New York (Sep 7–Oct 4, 1979).

George Rickey: Retrospective, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art, New York (Sep 7–Oct 4, 1979). Photo by Achim Pahle.

Solo Exhibitions

Skulpturen Material Technik, Amerika Haus, Berlin, Germany; travels to Galerie Skulima, Berlin, Germany.
George Rickey Retrospective, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Group Exhibitions

Constructivism and the Geometric Tradition, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; travels to Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, TX; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, CA; Seattle Art Museum, WA; Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA; Nelson Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, KS; The Detroit Institute of Art, MI; Milwaukee Art Center, WI.
Betty Asher’s Cups, Asher Gallery, New York.

Major Installations

Two Conical Segments Gyratory Gyratory II, Televisa Mexico, Mexico City.
Two Rectangles Vertical Gyratory IV, Cincinnati, OH.
Two Open Rectangles Excentric VI Square Section, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Two Lines Eighteen Feet, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

*Two Conical Segments Gyratory Gyratory* (1979, stainless steel) installed in Mexico City. Private collection.

‍

George Rickey installs his retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art in New York (Sep 7–Oct 4, 1979). Photo by Achim Pahle.

George Rickey installs his retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art in New York (Sep 7–Oct 4, 1979).

George Rickey installs his retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art in New York (Sep 7–Oct 4, 1979). Photo by Achim Pahle.

George Rickey installs his retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art in New York (Sep 7–Oct 4, 1979). Director Kevin McDonald. "The Moving World of George Rickey." Figment Films Ltd. in association with BBC Scotland, 1998.

World Events

Margaret Thatcher becomes Prime Minister of the U.K.
The Iranian Revolution culminates in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and the replacement of his government with an Islamic republic under the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
In a diplomatic standoff between the U.S. and Iran known as the Iran hostage crisis, 52 American diplomats and citizens are held hostage for 444 days from November 4 until January 20, 1981.

Art Event

James Turrell purchases Roden Crater, a cinder cone type of volcanic cone from an extinct volcano, with a remaining interior volcanic crater, outside of Flagstaff, AZ, to create a naked-eye observatory.

1980

Rickey travels to Berlin, London, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Cologne, and Peru.

He establishes the Hand Hollow Foundation to provide grants to artists for residencies in East Chatham, NY.

"I committed myself to a completely new technology, a new aesthetic, new criteria, a new kind of response from others and a new antiphony between myself and the new object I held in my hand. I had to wonder whether Calder had said it all; when I found he had not, I had to choose among the many doors I then found open."

Gruen, John. “The Sculpture of George Rickey: Silent Movement, Performing in a World of Its Own.” Art News, vol. 79, no. 4 (April 1980).

Solo Exhibitions

Pier + Ocean: Construction in the Art of the Seventies, Hayward Gallery, London.
George Rickey, Sig Wenger Gallery, San Diego, CA.
George Rickey, Makler Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; Galerie Cuenca, Ulm, Germany.
First solo exhibition at Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York (begins lifelong friendship with Maxwell Davidson).

Group Exhibitions

Skulptur im 20. Jahrhundert, Wenkenpark, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland.
Hair, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York.
Art Collected from Southwestern Museums, The Vice President’s House, Washington, D.C.

Major Installation

Triple L Excentric Gyratory II, National City Bank, Cleveland, OH.

Installation of Triple L Excentric Gyratory Gyratory II (1980, stainless steel). PNC Center, Cleveland, OH.

World Events

To protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. leads a boycott of the Summer Olympic Games in Moscow.
Solidarity, a trade union, is founded at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland.
Ronald Wilson Reagan is elected President of the U.S.

1981

Rickey travels to Berlin, Amsterdam, Glasgow, San Francisco, and Ireland.

He works with Seth Schneidman on the documentary, George Rickey—Portrait of an Artist (later edited by Kevin Macdonald and retitled The Moving World of George Rickey).

Director Seth Schneidman films George Rickey for his documentary *George Rickey: Portrait of an Artist*, 1982.

Rickey attends a seminar at Gorey Arts Center in County Wexford, Ireland.

He receives a citation from the National Association of Schools of Art.

Maquette of Forty Triangles in Three Movements (1981, stainless steel). Berlinische Galerie, Berlin.

Test installation of Forty Triangles in Three Movements (1981, stainless steel). Bayerische Hypotheken und Vachsel-Bank, Munich, Germany. Photo by Achim Pahle.

Solo Exhibitions

George Rickey, Gimpel-Hanover & Andre Emmerich Galerien, Zurich, Switzerland.
George Rickey Kinetic Sculpture, Carl Schlossberg Fine Arts, Sherman Oaks, CA.
George Rickey, Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montreal, Canada.

Major Installation

‍Double L Excentric Gyratory 1/3, Central Park South, New York.

Art Event

Richard Serra installs his Tilted Arc on the Federal Plaza in New York.

1982

Rickey travels to Berlin, Cologne, and Zurich.

He celebrates his 75th birthday with family in Scotland.

Former President Gerald Ford and George Rickey at the dedication of Two Open Triangles Up Gyratory II (1982, stainless steel), Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. Photo by The Michigan Daily/UPI Photo.

George and Edie Rickey, Canaan, NY, 1982. Photo by Achim Pahle.

Solo Exhibitions

George Rickey Kinetic Sculpture on Clydeside, Custom House Quay, St. Enoch Exhibition Centre and Carlton Place, Glasgow, Scotland; travels to Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, England, and Ilkley Manor House, Ilkley, England.
George Rickey Recent Sculpture, John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco.

Group Exhibitions

The First International Shoebox Sculpture Exhibition, University of Hawaii, Honolulu.
Spielraum Raumspiele, Der Alten Oper, Stadt Frankfurt, Germany.
Artists’ Toys, Vanderwoude Tananbaum Gallery, New York.
Galerie Schoeller, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Big in Boston, Thomas Segal Gallery, Boston, MA.
Contemporary Sculpture at Chesterwood, Chesterwood, Stockbridge, MA.

Major Installations

Triple L Excentric Gyratory Gyratory--Köln, Cologne, Germany.
Double L Excentric Gyratory, private garden (subsequently gift to San Francisco Public Library, 1997).
Open Triangles Up Gyratory II, Gerald Ford Library, Ann Arbor, MI.
L’s One Up One Down Excentric, National Steel Company, Pittsburgh, PA.
Two Lines Oblique IV, Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart, Germany.

“My work must be precise or it fails. I am rather sloppy by nature; the precision comes out of need, not personality.”

George Rickey, “The Métier,” 1965, in George Rickey: Selected Works from the Estate 1954-2000, Marlborough Gallery New York, 2016. Article first published in “Contemporary Sculpture: Arts Yearbook,” The Art Digest, 1965.

George Rickey: Kinetic Sculpture on Clydeside, Scottish Sculpture Trust, Glasgow, Scotland (Jun 5–Aug 29, 1982). Photo by Achim Pahle.

1983

Rickey travels to Berlin and Munich.

He receives the honorary degree, Doctor of Fine Arts, from Tulane University in New Orleans, LA.

George and Edie Rickey take a break from installing George Rickey: Skulpturen, Galerie Schoeller, Düsseldorf, Germany (Oct 15, 1983–Feb 4, 1984).

George Rickey with sculptor Kenneth Snelson, 1983.

Solo Exhibitions

George Rickey und die Tradition des Konstruktivismus in Berlin, Stadtmuseum, Düsseldorf, Germany.
George Rickey, New Orleans Plus 30, Art Gallery, Department of Art, Newcomb College, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA.
George Rickey, Galerie Lauter, Mannheim, Germany.
George Rickey, Makler Gallery, Philadelphia, PA.
George Rickey: 30 Years of His Art, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, NY.

Group Exhibitions

International Garden Exhibition, Munich, Germany (installs large water sculpture Three Right Angles).
Sculpture Veksølund 1983, Veksølund, Veksø, Denmark.
Concepts in Construction: 1910–1980, Norton Gallery of Art, West Palm Beach, FL. Sculpture—The Tradition in Steel, Nassau County Museum of Fine Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY.
Minimalism to Expressionism: Painting and Sculpture Since 1965 from the Permanent Collection, Whitney Museum of Art, New York, NY.
Transit: Berliner Künstler in Düsseldorfer Galerien, Various galleries, Düsseldorf, Germany.

Major Installations

Double L Excentric Gyratory 2/3, Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Garden, PepsiCo, Inc., Purchase, NY.
Forty Triangles in Three Movements, Bayerische Hypotheken- und Vechsel-Bank, Munich, Germany.
Etoile VIII, Standard Oil Company (later renamed BP America), Cleveland, OH.

Skulptur Veksølund 1983, Veksølund, Veksø, Denmark (May 28–Jul 31, 1983).

George Rickey: New Orleans Plus 30, Newcomb College Art Gallery, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA (Oct 16–Nov 20, 1983).

George Rickey: Thirty Years of His Art, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York (Nov 15–Dec 24, 1983).

1984

"In this late, but not yet twilit afternoon, I am still catching up with what I have wanted to do, partly pushing into the unknown to find out what I might do, partly saying no, not yet to possible adventures."

George Rickey, Artist's Statement (translation), Skulptur Veksølund 1984.

*Two Open Rectangles Horizontal* (1984, stainless steel). Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX.

Solo Exhibitions

‍Kinetische Freiplastiken 1972–1984, Bauhaus Archiv, Berlin.
George Rickey, Josef Albers Museum, Quadrat, Bottrop, Germany.
George Rickey Recent Sculptures, Inkfish Gallery, Denver, CO.

Group Exhibitions

Citywide Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition, Toledo, OH.
Ordinary and Extraordinary Uses—Objects by Artists, Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY.
Skulptur Veksølund 1984, Veksølund, Veksø, Denmark.

Major Installations

Two Lines Up Excentric VI, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh.
Two Open Rectangles Horizontal—Fifteen Feet, Southwestern Bell Telephone, Dallas, TX.
Four Open Squares Horizontal Tapered, Trinity Hospice, London.
Four Lines in a T III, Joseph Albers Museum, Bottrop, Germany.
Double L Excentric Gyratory—Pond, Harald Quandt Haus, Bad Homburg, Germany.

George Rickey, Inkfish Gallery, Denver, CO (Mar 23–May 5, 1984).

George Rickey, Moderne Galerie, Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop, Germany (Aug 12–Oct 14, 1984).

George Rickey installs his show at the Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop, Germany, 1984.

Edie Rickey with artist Peter Sedgley, Berlin, Germany, 1984.

1985

Rickey establishes a studio and living quarters in Santa Barbara, CA.

He travels to Honolulu, Venice, Berlin, Edinburgh, and Cologne.

Test installation of Four Rectangles Oblique Gyratory IV (1979–1985, stainless steel).

Solo Exhibition

George Rickey in South Bend, Art Center of South Bend, Indiana University of South Bend, St. Mary’s College, and the Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN.

Group Exhibitions

Edith C. Blume Art Institute, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.
Contemporary Sculpture at Chesterwood, Chesterwood, Stockbridge, MA.

Major Installations

‍Two Open Triangles Up Gyratory II, University of Judaism, Los Angeles.
Double L Excentric Gyratory--Auckland, City Art Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand.
Four Rectangles Oblique IV, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany.

Double L Excentric Gyratory Auckland (1985, stainless steel). Auckland City Council, Auckland, New Zealand.

Installation of Four Rectangles Oblique Gyratory IV (1979–1985, stainless steel), Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany.

World Event

Mikhail Gorbachev becomes the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union.

Art Event

Jean-Michel Basquiat collaborates with Andy Warhol on Ten Punching Bags (Last Supper).

1986

Rickey receives the New York State Governor’s Arts Award.

He receives the Atlanta (GA) Urban Design Commission Award of Excellence.

George and Edie Rickey with artist Cleve Gray, 1986.

George and Philip Rickey with Ed Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, Kienholz’s apartment, Berlin, Germany, 1986.

Solo Exhibition

‍George Rickey in Bryant Park, concurrent exhibitions at Maxwell Davidson Gallery and Zabriskie Gallery, New York, sponsored by the Public Art Fund.

Group Exhibitions

Elders of the Tribe, Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, New York (travels 1987–88).
An American Renaissance: Painting and Sculpture Since 1940, Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, FL.

Major Installations

Triple L Excentric Gyratory Gyratory II, 2/3, Coca-Cola, Atlanta, GA (for which Rickey received the Atlanta Urban Design Commission Award of Excellence).
Peristyle II, Var. II, Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, MO.
Two Conical Segments Gyratory Gyratory II, The Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN.
Three Lines Diagonal Jointed—Wall, Krasl Art Center, St. Joseph, MI.
Triple L Excentric Gyratory Gyratory II, 3/3, Battle Creek, MI.

Three Lines Diagonal Jointed Wall (1984, stainless steel). Krasl Art Center, St. Joseph, MN.

World Events

After only 73 seconds in flight, the Space Shuttle Challenger breaks apart, killing all seven crew members aboard.
The worst nuclear disaster in history occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near the Soviet city of Pripyat on April 26.
The Iran-Contra affair becomes public knowledge.

1987

Rickey travels to Scottsdale, Berlin, Cologne, Stuttgart, and Zurich.

Rickey presents a lecture and meets with students at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.

He is elected to the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.

He celebrates his 80th birthday in East Chatham, NY.

A delegation from the U.S. invites Rickey to travel with them to China, where he visits various art schools and gives demonstrations of his work.

Rickey spends Christmas in St. Paul.

George Rickey on the Great Wall, China, 1987.

Solo Exhibitions

George Rickey, in Celebration of His Eightieth Year, Carl Schlosberg Fine Arts, Sherman Oaks, CA.
George Rickey zum 80. Geburtstag, Roswitha Haftmann Modern Art, Zurich, Switzerland. George Rickey zum 80. Geburtstag, Galerie Pels Leusden, Berlin.
George Rickey: Projects for Public Sculpture, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, Purchase, NY; travels to Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA.

Group Exhibitions

Kunst im Öffentlichen Raum, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, under the auspices of the Minister of Cultural Affairs on the occasion of the 750th anniversary of Berlin, Skulpturenboulevard, Berlin.
Sculpture: Looking into Three Dimensions, Anchorage Museum of History and Art, Anchorage, AK.

Major Installations

Two Lines Excentric Jointed with Six Angles, Skulpturenboulevard, Berlin (subsequently installed at Mercedes-Benz headquarters, Berlin, 1989).
Four Trapezoids as Two Rectangles IV, An Farina, Cologne, Germany.
Space Churn with Spheres III, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD.
Four Trapezoids as Two Rectangles V, Museum of Arts and Sciences, Macon, GA.
Two Open Rectangles Excentric VII—Triangular Section, Golden Gate North, San Francisco.
Column V Bronze, Detroit Art Institute, Detroit, MI.
Four Open Squares Horizontal II, Bank of America, San Francisco (for which he received the City of Concord Design Award, Excellence in Integration of Sculpture & Landscape, in 1989).

Two Lines Excentric Jointed with Six Angles Berlin (1987, stainless steel). Daimler Benz, Stuttgart, Germany.

George Rickey zum 80. Gebertstag, Galerie Pels-Leusden, Berlin, Germany (Jun 13–Aug, 1987); travels to Galerie Schoeller, Dusseldorf, Germany (Sep 8–Oct 31, 1987).

1988

Travels to California, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Cologne, and Zurich.

George Rickey: Indoor/Outdoor Sculptures, Stichting Veranneman, Kruishoutem, Belgium (May 7–Jun 18, 1988).

Solo Exhibitions

3 Skulpturen von George Rickey in Köln, Moderne Stadt, Cologne, Germany.
George Rickey Indoor/Outdoor Sculptures, Veranneman Foundation, Kruishoutem, Belgium.
George Rickey Sculpture, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, NY.

Group Exhibitions

Movement & Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, Japan.
Sculpture: Looking in Three Dimensions, Anchorage Museum of History and Art, Anchorage, AK.
Contemporary Sculpture at Chesterwood, Chesterwood, Stockbridge, MA.
Veksølund 10 Years, Veksølund. Veksø, Denmark.

Major Installations

Two Rectangles Vertical Gyratory Up V, Koll Company, Pleasanton, CA.
One Up One Down Excentric—Thirty-Two Feet, Landtag Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Four Lines in a T—Fifteen Feet, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin.
Four Lines Oblique Gyratory—Rhombus III, Justizzentrum, Cologne, Germany.
Two Lines Variable—Thirty Feet, Morris Arboretum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.

Four Lines Oblique Gyratory Rhombus III (1988, stainless steel). Justizzentrum, Cologne, Germany.

‍

3 Skulpturen von George Rickey in Köln, Cologne, Germany (1988–1989).

‍

1989

Rickey travels to Zurich, Berlin, Rotterdam, London, Cologne, and Stuttgart.

He visits artists Ed and Nancy Kienholz in Hope, ID.

Rickey is in Berlin when the Wall comes down.

He works with Jörn Merkert on the development of a permanent “Rickey room” at Berlinische Galerie in Berlin.

Edie Rickey at the Berlin Wall, Berlin, Germany, 1989.

Three Squares Vertical Diagonal (1978, stainless steel). Benesse House Museum, Naoshima, Japan. Photo by Benesse House Museum.

Solo Exhibitions

In Celebration of Three Breaking Columns, Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
George Rickey Two Exhibitions, indoors at John Berggruen Gallery, outdoors at Esprit Sculpture Garden, San Francisco.
George Rickey Important Sculpture, Marianne Friedland Gallery, Toronto, Canada (also 1990).
George Rickey, Gallery Kasahara, Osaka, Japan.

Group Exhibition

Balancing Act, Art Museum, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA.

Major Installations

Four Trapezoids as Two Rectangles, Union Bank, Zurich, Switzerland (moved to Wolfsberg in 1996).
Three Breaking Columns, Rotterdamse Schouwburg, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Three Squares Vertical Diagonal, Benesse Island, Japan.
Two Lines Down, Eighteen Feet, Nuages II, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

*Three Breaking Columns*, Rotterdamse Schouwburg, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

George Rickey, Gallery Kasahara, Osaka, Japan (Sep 25–Oct 14, 1989).

Three Breaking Columns (1983–1986, stainless steel). Rotterdamse Shouwburg, The Netherlands.

World Events

The Berlin Wall comes down.
The student-led Tiananmen Square protests calling for democracy, free speech, and a free press in China are halted in a bloody crackdown on June 4 and 5 known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Hirohito, the 124th emperor of Japan, dies and is succeeded by his son Akihito.
The Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker owned by Exxon Shipping Company, strikes Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef off the coast of Alaska on March 24, spilling 10.8 million gallons of crude oil over the next several days.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web.

Art Events

Following an acrimonious public debate, Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc is removed from Foley Federal Plaza in Manhattan and destroyed.

1990

Rickey recieves the honorary degree, Doctor of Fine Arts, from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY.

He serves as a panelist on the symposium, “Pricing and Negotiating Your Sculpture,” at the International Sculpture Center in Washington, D.C.

George Rickey receives an honorary doctorate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), May 1990.

George Rickey, Inkfish Gallery, Denver, CO (Mar 8–Apr 20, 1990).

Cluster of Cubes (Three) on Gimbal (1990, stainless steel). George Rickey Foundation.

Solo Exhibitions

George Rickey, Ausbildungszentrum Wolfsberg, Ermatingen, Switzerland.
George Rickey Sculptures 1955–1990, Artcurial, Paris.
George Rickey Kinetic Sculptures, Galerie Utermann, Dortmund, Germany.
George Rickey: Recent Sculptures, Inkfish Gallery, Denver, CO.

Group Exhibitions

A Family Affair—The Rickeys (George, Phil, Mary), Arpel Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA. ‍
Downtown Kinetic, USX Tower, Pittsburgh, PA

Major Installations

Column of Four Squares Excentric Gyratory III and Three Rectangles Horizontal Jointed Gyratory III, Tokyo City Hall, Japan.
Four Lines Oblique Gyratory II, Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum, Benesse Island, Japan.
Four Planes Hanging, Fukutaki Publishing, Okayama, Japan.
Two Rectangles Vertical Gyratory Up III, Zurich, Switzerland.

George Rickey: Sculptures 1955–1990, Artcurial, Paris, France (Oct 23–Dec 8, 1990).

Column of Four Squares Excentric Gyratory III (1990, stainless steel). Tokyo City Hall, Tokyo, Japan.

George Rickey: Kinetische Skulpturen, Galerie Utermann, Dortmund, Germany (Oct 26–Dec 22, 1990).

World Event

Germany is reunified, and Helmut Kohl becomes Chancellor.
The Gulf War, codenamed Operation Desert Shield, begins on August 2.

1991

Rickey travels to Grenoble, Berlin, and Glasgow.

J. Carter Brown, director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., visits Rickey in East Chatham, NY. As a result, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., acquires Cluster of Four Cubes, which is installed in 1992.

*Cluster of Four Cubes* (1992, stainless steel). National Gallery, Washington, D.C.

George and Edie Rickey, Santa Barbara, CA, c. 1991–1992. Photo by Hilary Dole Klein.

Solo Exhibition

‍George Rickey Art of Movement, Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY.

Group Exhibitions

Abstract Sculpture in America: 1930–1970 traveled nationally by American Federation of Arts.
Schwerelos, Schloss Charlottenburg, Grosse Orangerie, Berlin.
George Rickey: Indoor and Outdoor Sculpture, Thomas Segal Gallery, Boston, MA.

Major Installations

Two Conical Segments Gyratory Gyratory IV—Homage to W.A.M., Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany.
Conversation, Musée de Grenoble, France.

Conversation Grenoble (1991, stainless steel). Musée de Grenoble, Grenoble, France.

George Rickey: Recent Sculptures, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York (Oct 19–Nov 20, 1991).

World Events

The Soviet Union is dissolved, and Boris Yeltsin becomes president of the First Russian Federation.
The Gulf War ends.

1992

Rickey travels to Guadalajara, Mexico; Berlin; London; and Nice and Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France.

He celebrates his 85th birthday at the Berlinische Galerie in Berlin.

Minneapolis Institute of Art acquires Sedge II.

Storm King Art Center acquires Five Open Squares Gyratory Gyratory.

Five Open Squares Gyratory Gyratory (1981, stainless steel). Storm King Art Center. Photo by Storm King Art Center.

Solo Exhibitions

George Rickey in Berlin 1967–1992, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (permanent installation).
George Rickey in Köln, Cologne, Germany.
George Rickey Sculptures, Tony Birckhead Gallery, Cincinnati, OH.
George Rickey: In Celebration of His 85th Year, Carl Schlosberg Fine Arts, Sherman Oaks, CA.

Group Exhibitions

L’art en Mouvement, Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France.
Environmental Sculpture, Kouros Sculpture Center, Ridgefield, CT.

George Rickey in Berlin, 1967–1992: Die Sammlung der Berlinischen Galerie (Berlin: Ars Nicolai/Berlinische Galerie, 1992).

George Rickey: In Celebration of His 85th Year, Carl Schlosberg Fine Arts, Sherman Oaks, CA (Apr 5–May 3, 1992).

World Events

The European Union is created.
The Bosnian War begins.
Riots break out in L.A. following the police beating of Rodney King.

1993

Rickey travels to St. Paul, St. Lucia, Denver; Berlin, Dortmund, and Nurenberg, Germany.

He is awarded the Verdienstkreuz, 1 (erste) klasse (Order of Merit, 1st Class) of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Edie Rickey with artist Richard Pettibone at the opening of The George and Edith Rickey Collection of Constructivist Art and Richard Pettibone Miniatures.

The George and Edith Rickey Collection of Constructivist Art and Richard Pettibone Miniatures, Neuberger Museum of Art, SUNY Purchase, Purchase, NY (Sep 12–Jan 9, 1994).

Solo Exhibitions

‍A Dialogue in Steel and Air—George Rickey, Philharmonic Center for the Arts, Naples, FL.
‍George Rickey in Santa Barbara, University Art Museum, Santa Barbara, CA.
George Rickey at Muhlenberg, Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA.
George Rickey, Gallery Kasahara, Osaka, Japan.
George Rickey: Recent Sculptures, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, NY.

Group Exhibitions

In the Sculptor’s Landscape, Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, University of California, Los Angeles.
Akademie 1993, Akademie der Künste, Berlin.
George Rickey and Recent Sculptures by Philip Rickey, Inkfish Gallery, Denver, CO.

Major Installations

Breaking Column II, City Park, Dortmund, Germany.
Faceted Column, Trigon Building, Berlin.
Four Lines Oblique Gyratory—Rhombus, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
Triple L Excentric Gyratory Gyratory IV, Osaka University, Japan.
Six Random Lines Excentric, Richard Wagner Platz, Nuremberg, Germany.

George Rickey with *Six Random Lines Excentric* (1993, stainless steel). Nuremberg, Germany.

George Rickey, Gallery Kasahara, Osaka, Japan (Oct 1–30, 1993).

“A Technology of Kinetic Art” by George Rickey. Scientific American, Feb 1993, pages 74–79.

World Events

A group of Pakistani terrorists detonate a truck bomb beneath the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York.
U.S. and Texas law enforcement are joined by the U.S. military to raid David Koresh’s Branch Dividians compound near Waco, TX.
The Slovak Republic becomes an independent sovereign nation.

Art Event

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum commissions Ellsworth Kelly to create a two-part wall sculpture entitled Memorial.

1994

Rickey establishes the George Rickey Foundation as a non-profit corporation.

Two Lines Eighteen Feet (1965, stainless steel) at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Photo by Whitney Museum of American Art.

Crucifera--Pillar of Light (1994, stainless steel). Estate of George Rickey. Photo by Mark Zaref.

George Rickey, Crucifera--Pillar of of Light (Wall), 1994. Unique, Stainless steel, 97" x 20". Estate of George Rickey. Video by Brad Daniels.

‍

Solo Exhibitions

A Selection of Drawings and Sculpture by George Rickey, The Century Association, New York.
Rickey—Sieben Kinetische Skulpturen, Galerie Utermann, Dortmund, Germany.
George Rickey: Horizontal Column/Testwall, TZ’Art & Co., New York.

Group Exhibitions

Sculpture at Naumkeag, Naumkeag, Stockbridge, MA.
The Constructive Vocabulary, An American Vision, Galerie Dr. Estvan Schlégl, Zurich, Switzerland.
20. Jubiläumsausstellung, Galerie Schoeller, Düsseldorf, Germany.

Major Installations

Two Lines Up Excentric—Twelve Feet, Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY.
Two Lines—Eighteen Feet, Whitney Museum of Art, New York.
Four Open Rectangles Diagonal Jointed II Gyratory, Bispebjerg Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark.

*Faceted Column* (1992–1994, stainless steel). Trigon Building, Berlin, Germany.

Test installation of Faceted Column (1992–1994, stainless steel).

Invitation to the opening of Faceted Column (1992–1994, stainless steel) and presentation by the Federal Republic of Germany of the Verdienstkreuz, 1 klasse (Federal Order of Merit, First Class) to George Rickey, Trigon Building, Berlin, Germany.

World Events

Apartheid ends in South Africa, and Nelson Mandela is elected president.
The Rwandan genocide, following the assassination of President Habyarimana, leaves an estimated 1,000,000 people dead.

Art Events

Edward Kienholz dies and is buried in an “authentic Kienholz installation,” a 1940 Packard coupe.
Roy Lichtenstein creates his Times Square Mural; it is installed in 2002 in the Port Authority Bus Terminal station in New York.

1995

Edith Rickey dies on June 24. A memorial for her is held on August 7 in East Chatham, NY.

George Rickey receives the Gold Medal for Sculpture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is elected to their membership.

Edie Rickey in East Chatham, NY, 1992.

Gold Medal for Sculpture presented to George Rickey by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

George Rickey at the American Academy to receive the Gold Medal for Sculpture and attend the opening of the *Gold Medal Exhibition* at American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York (May 17–Jun 11, 1995).

Solo Exhibition

‍George Rickey: Recent Sculptures, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, NY.

Group Exhibitions

Twentieth-Century American Sculpture at the White House Sculpture Garden, The White House, Washington, D.C.
Kinetische Metallobjekte, Balance und Bewegung, Städtischen Museum, Gelsenkirchen, Germany
Light Interpretations: A Hanukah Menorah Invitational, The Jewish Museum, San Francisco.
Exhibition of Work by Newly Elected Members and Recipients of Honors and Awards [George Rickey, Gold Medal for Sculpture], American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY.

Major Installations

Peristyle V, Benesse Island, Japan.
Column of Four Squares Excentric Gyratory III, Gibbs Sculpture Collection (Keystone Trust), Auckland, New Zealand.
Two Lines Horizontal Gyratory, Staatliche Museum, Schwerin, Germany.
Four Lines Oblique Gyratory—Square, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles.

Annular Eclipse Wall III (1994-1995, stainless steel). Private collection.

1996

Rickey travels to Glasgow, Denver, St. Paul, San Francisco, and Paris.

He receives the Lord Provost’s Award, in Recognition of Service to the Visual Arts, presented by the City of Glasgow, Scotland.

Rickey spends Thanksgiving in St. Paul.

Pivoted Folds (1996, stainless steel) and Untitled (2000, stainless steel, polychrome). Private collections. Photo by Marlborough Gallery.

Column of Six Cubes with Gimbal (1996, stainless steel, polychrome). Estate of George Rickey. Photo by Marlborough Gallery.

Solo Exhibition

George Rickey: Recent Kinetic Sculptures, Inkfish Gallery, Denver, CO.

Group Exhibitions

Lumière et Mouvement, Galerie Denise René, Paris.
Cinquante ans d’art construit, hommage à Denise René, l’Hôtel du Département, Strasbourg, France.
Outdoor Sculpture, Elena Zang Gallery, Woodstock, NY.
Contemporary Sculpture at Chesterwood, Chesterwood, Stockbridge, MA.

*Lumiere et Mouvement*, Galerie Denise Rene, Paris, France (Oct–Nov 1996).

World Events

The Taliban take control of Afghanistan.

1997

Rickey travels to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and South Bend, IN.

He celebrates his 90th birthday with a number of special exhibitions.

Rickey gives the sculpture, Dialogue, to the South Bend Regional Museum in South Bend, IN.

He spends Thanksgiving in St. Paul with his son, Philip, and his family.

He attends the unveiling of Etoile Variation V at the Albany Institute of History and Art in Albany, NY.

Rickey family in East Chatham, NY, c. 1997.

Solo Exhibitions

George Rickey, Motion and Silence, Galerie Dr. István Schlégel, Zurich, Switzerland.
George Rickey: Master of Kinetic Sculpture in Celebration of his 90th, Carl Schlosberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles.
Important Early Sculptures 1951–65, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York.
George Rickey: Master of Kinetic Sculpture—In Recognition of His 90th Year, Carl Schlosberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles.
George Rickey: Kinetic Sculpture, Snite Museum, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN.
Zum 90. Geburtstag—Kinetische Skulpturen, Städtische Kunstsammlungen, Chemnitz, Germany.

Group Exhibitions

1997 Biennial Exhibition of Public Art, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY.
Sculpture at Naumkeag, Naumkeag, Stockbridge, MA.

Major Installations

Cluster of Four Cubes, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY.
One Line Horizontal Floating—Twenty Feet, Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, Nashville, TN.
Two Planes Vertical Horizontal II, Veksølund, Denmark.

One Line Horizontal Floating (1994, stainless steel). Cheekwood, Tennessee Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, Nashville, TN.

Two Planes Vertical Horizontal III (1973, stainless steel). Veksø, Veksølund, Denmark.

George Rickey: Recent Sculptures in Recognition of his Ninetieth Year, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York (Nov 18–Dec 20, 1997).

George Rickey, Master of Kinetic Sculpture: In Celebration of his 90th Year, Carl Schlosberg Fine Arts, Sherman Oaks, CA (May 4–Jun 8, 1997).

World Events

Tony Blair becomes Prime Minister of the U.K.
Princess Diana dies as the result of a car accident in Paris.

1998

Rickey travels with his son, Philip, to Scotland, where he sails on the Clyde, and visits his childhood homes in Helensburgh and Glenalmond.

Rickey donates Triple L Excentric to Maggie’s Centre, in memory of Maggie Keswick of Glenalmond.

He visits Balliol College at the University of Oxford, and donates Two Planes Vertical Horizontal II to the College.

He travels to St. Paul for Christmas and then to San Francisco.

Horizontal Column of Five Squares II (Excentric) (1994, stainless). Marian Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX.

Untitled, 1998. Unique, Stainless steel and polychrome, 21.75" x 18" x 18". Estate of George Rickey. Video by Brad Daniels.

Solo Exhibition

‍George Rickey, Veranneman Foundation, Kruishoutem, Belgium.

Group Exhibition

‍Contemporary Sculpture at Chesterwood, Chesterwood, Stockbridge, MA.

Major Installations

Horizontal Column of Five Squares Excentric II, The Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX.
Space Churn—Red, Stanford University, California, on long-term loan (gifted in 1998).
Two Rectangles Vertical Gyratory Up V, Gibbs Sculpture Collection (Keyston Trust), Auckland, New Zealand.
Four Triangles Hanging (long-term loan), Albany International Airport, Albany, NY.

George Rickey: Bewegung und Stille (Motion and Silence), Galerie Istvan Schlegel, Zurich (Nov 22, 1997–Feb 14, 1998).

World Events

Osama Bin Laden publishes a fatwa against the West.
The Good Friday Agreement ends The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

1999

Rickey spends time in Santa Barbara, where he sets up a studio at the home of the Doles.

He receives the Lifetime Achievement Award in Contemporary Sculpture, along with Kenneth Snelson, at the Century Club in New York.

The edited version of the film, The Moving World of George Rickey, by Seth Scheidmen and Kevin Macdonald, receives its premiere.

Rickey spends Thanksgiving with Laura Verplank and family in Sewickley, PA, and Christmas with his son, Stuart, in San Francisco.

George Rickey and Kenneth Snelson receive the International Sculpture Center’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Presented in May 1999 at the Century Club, New York.

Kevin MacDonald’s film The Moving World of George Rickey premieres at the Birmingham Museum of Art.

Solo Exhibitions

Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama.
George Rickey: Recent Sculptures, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, NY.

Group Exhibitions

World Artists at the Millennium, The United Nations Visitors Lobby, New York.
Twentieth-Century American Sculpture at the White House, The White House, Washington, D.C.
Celebrating Sculpture—Personal Visions and Universal Themes: Aspects of American Sculpture Since 1945, The Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX.

Major Installations

Five Lines in Parallel Plane, University of Cincinnati, OH.
Two Lines Up Oblique, Greenwich Library, Greenwich, CT.
Six Random Lines Excentric III, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA.
One Line Horizontal Floating—Thirty Feet, Schweisfurth-Foundation, Glonn, Germany.
Conversation, Wilhelm-Hack Museum, Ludwigshaven, Germany.

George Rickey with Annular Eclipse IV (1999, stainless steel), East Chatham, NY, 1999.

Conversation (1991, stainless steel). Wilhelm Hack Museum, Ludwigshaven am Rhein, Germany.

World Events

Kosovo War ends the Yugoslav Wars.
Euro is introduced.
Columbine High School massacre.

Art Event

Louise Bourgeois’ Maman (Only piece in the collection of the Tate Modern made from stainless steel).

2000

Rickey travels to Santa Barbara, St. Paul, and South Bend, IN.

He installs Annular Eclipse (2000, stainless steel) on Park Avenue in New York as the first in a series of installations that turn the Park Avenue median into a sculpture park (filmed by Kevin Macdonald).

Rickey receives the honorary degree, Doctor of Fine Arts, from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, IN.

He spends Thanksgiving in St. Paul.

Annular Eclipse V (2000, stainless steel) installed on Park Avenue (between 61st and 62nd), New York. Private collection.

Kevin MacDonald films George Rickey at the installation of Annular Eclipse V.

George Rickey's "Annular Eclipse V" (2000) on Park Avenue. Director Kevin MacDonald.

‍

Solo Exhibitions

Gallery Kasahara, Tokyo, Japan.
George Rickey—A Retrospective, 1958–2000, Soma Gallery, La Jolla, CA.

Group Exhibitions

Welded Sculpture of the 20th Century, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, Purchase, NY.
International Sculpture Festival: Contemporary American Sculpture, Monte Carlo, Monaco.
Crossroads of American Sculpture, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN; travels to New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA.
Form and Movement in the 20th Century—Homage to Denise René, Tsukuba Museum of Art, Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art; travels to Urawa Art Museum and Himeji City Museum of Art, Japan.
Art & Mathematics 2000, The Cooper Union, Humanities Gallery and Brooks Design Center, New York; travels to Berkshire Community College, Koussevitzky Art Center, Pittsfield, MA.

Major Installations

Two Lines Oblique, The Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN.
Four Open Squares Horizontal Tapered, Frederik Meijer Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI.
Triple N III Gyratory, The Toledo Museum, Toledo, OH.
Six Random Lines Excentric, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.

George Rickey: A Retrospective, 1958–2000, Soma Gallery, La Jolla, CA (Apr 7–May 13, 2000).

*Triple N III Gyratory* (1988, stainless steel). Toledo Museum, Toledo, OH.

*Untitled* (2000, stainless steel, polychrome). George Rickey Foundation. Photo by David Lee.

World Events

Al-Qaeda bombs the U.S.S. Cole.
George W. Bush is elected President of the U.S.
Vladimir Putin is elected President of Russia.

2001

Rickey travels to Santa Barbara.

With his health failing, Rickey moves to St. Paul, where he sets up a small studio.

George Rickey, East Chatham, NY, 2001.

Solo Exhibition

‍George Rickey: Defining the Fourth Dimension, 1953–1977, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, NY.

Group Exhibitions

Hand Hollow Fellows, Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA.
Modern Sculptures, Gallery Kasahara, Tokyo, Japan.
Contemporary Sculpture at Chesterwood, Chesterwood, Stockbridge, MA.

Major Installations

Horizontal Column of Five Squares, Excentric II, City of Schiedam, Beatrix Park, Holland (formerly at Julianapark).
Annular Eclipse IV, Louisiana Museum, Humlebæk, Denmark.

Untitled (2001, stainless steel, polychrome). Private collection. Photo by Marlborough Gallery.

World Events

Terrorists destroy the World Trade Center.
The U.S. declares War on Terror.

2002

George Rickey dies on July 17 at the age of 95 in St. Paul. Memorials are held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York on October 24, and in East Chatham, NY, on October 26.

Rickey’s son Philip receives the Finkenwerder Award in his father’s name in Hamburg, Germany.

“I am not an inventor. I have learned that 'new' does not mean 'good,' that novelty is seductive but treacherous. This does not mean that I don’t have a frontier to explore. I am deeply interested in what lies just beyond the frontier. I try to cross it, to glimpse what awaits there, as discovery, as a possibly expressive language. What lies there is not new; it has been there all the time, waiting to be used.”

George Rickey, East Chatham, NY, May 22, 1985. From George Rickey in South Bend. South Bend: Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame, 1985.

Solo Exhibition

‍George Rickey: Blades, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, NY.

Major Installations

Annular Eclipse Sixteen Feet Variation II, Hines Corporation, San Francisco, CA.
Two Open Rectangles Diagonal Jointed III—Wall, Olivet College, Olivet, MI.
Two Lines Up—Thirty Feet, Hyogo Prefectural Museum, Kobe, Japan.
Four Trapezoids as Two Rectangles III (on extended loan), Airbus, Hamburg, Germany.

World Events

The U.S. begins a search in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.
The U.S. establishes the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

Chronology by Decade