Four Lines Oblique, 1973, George Rickey (American, 1907-2002)

stainless steel, 20’ high

George Rickey was born in South Bend, Indiana, the son of an engineer and the grandson of a clock maker. His family moved to Scotland when he was a young boy. Rickey studied at Oxford University, where he participated in drawing classes but ultimately finished his degree in history. After Oxford, he decided to becoome an artist.

During the 1930s he spent time in Paris, New York, and various universities in Illinois and Michigan. In 1941, he was drafted into the Army Air Corps and worked maintaining the computing instruments for B-29 bombers. It was during this time that Rickey discovered his genius for mechanics and interest in sculpture. He began his career by making mobiles, and eventually started to make kinetic sculptures. Rickey once said, “...I never considered making any sculpture that didn’t move.”

Rickey typically used simple geometric shapes and lines made of stainless steel, and then balanced them in such a way that the elements of the piece would move only by the forces of nature, gravity and wind. Rickey did not incorporate mechanical devices to provide motion. His search for the essence of movement led to the evolution of a new spatial vocabulary in visual art and influenced sculptors such as Lin Emery and John Scott. Rickey himself best described the delicate dance of Four Lines Oblique when he said, “I wanted whatever eloquence there was to come out of the performance of the piece--never out of the shape itself.”