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Annular Eclipse VII
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Vero Beach. FL (March 8, 2007) - A major traveling exhibition of works by renowned Yaddo sculptor George Rickey opened recently at the Vero Beach Museum of Art on the centennial of the artist's birth.
George Rickey Kinetic Sculpture: A Retrospective, a 50-year survey of both indoor and outdoor sculptures, features 52 works borrowed from public and private collections. It is the first such exhibition of his sculpture since an important survey of his work was presented in 1979 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The exhibition, the inaugural show in the Alice and Jim Beckwith Sculpture Park at the Florida museum, will remain up in Vero Beach through May 20 and then travels to the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan, this fall and to the Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas, in the fall of 2008.
Recognized worldwide for his abstract kinetic sculptures, Rickey trained originally as a painter. But in 1949 he began to create sculptures with moving parts that evolved into heavy stainless steel geometric structures delicately balanced to rotate on precision bearings he devised himself. The arms of the pieces were poised so that natural air currents would cause them to sweep, spin, or swirl through the air. His international reputation was established in 1964, when his kinetic piece "Two Lines Temporal" was shown at the international art fair Documenta III shortly after his first Yaddo residency in 1963. He returned to Yaddo in 1998 for a month-long working visit.
In 1996, Rickey transferred to Yaddo ownership of his "Two Slender Lines Excentric," a 23-foot tall stainless steel piece with two 15-foot blades that slice the air in reaction to wind. In 2000, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the founding of Yaddo, Rickey established an endowed residency to support the visits of young visual artists. Designees to the George Rickey Endowed Residency include Ron Baron, Stas Orlovski, and Carol Pereira.
A major monograph on Rickey’s life and work accompanies the exhibition, which was organized and curated by Lucinda H. Gedeon, Executive Director of the Vera Beach Museum of Art. Click here for a direct link to the online
Yaddo Artists Calendar listing for the hours the exhibition is open in Florida, or click here to view events by month or by specific date or artist.
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