George Rickey
| George Rickey | |
|---|---|
Breaking Column, stainless steel, 1988, Honolulu Museum of Art
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| Born |
June 6, 1907 South Bend, Indiana |
| Died | July 17, 2002 (aged 95) Saint Paul, Minnesota |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | University of Oxford |
| Known for | Sculpture |
| Movement | Kinetic Sculpture |
| Three Rectangles Horizontal Jointed Gyratory III | |
 Kinetic sculpture on YouTube at the Delaware Art Museum (1:03) |
George Warren Rickey (June 6, 1907 – July 17, 2002) was an American kinetic sculptor.
Rickey was born on June 6, 1907 in South Bend, Indiana. At a 1985 retrospective show, he later recalled that as a very small child, he was fascinated by the window latches in his home. These latches, which can be found in many historic South Bend homes, operate conically at counter-intuitive angles that are oblique to the "apparent" design of the otherwise rectilinear form of the latch. "One expects the latch to open by pulling, but it's a conical crank, you see." This conical, oblique design shows up in many of George Rickey's works, where the axes of motion give unexpected movement to the rectilinear forms of his work.
When Rickey was still a child, his father, an executive with Singer Sewing Machine Company, moved the family to Glasgow, Scotland in 1913. They lived near the river Clyde, and George learned to sail around the outer islands on the family's 30 feet (9.1 m) sailboat.
Rickey was educated at Glenalmond College and received a degree in History from Balliol College, Oxford, with frequent visits to the Ruskin School of Drawing. He spent a short time traveling Europe and, against the advice of his father, studied art in Paris at Académie L’Hote and Académie Moderne. He then returned to the United States and began teaching at the Groton School, where among his many students was future National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy.
After leaving Groton, Rickey worked at various schools throughout the country as part of the Carnegie Corporation Visiting Artists/Artists in Residence program (partially funded by the Works Progress Administration). His focus was primarily on painting. While taking part in these programs, he painted portraits, taught classes, and created a set of murals at Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois. He maintained an art studio in New York from 1934 to 1942, when he was drafted.
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