Announcing Exclusive Worldwide Representation of George Rickey

Kasmin is honored to announce exclusive worldwide representation of the work of American sculptor George Rickey (1907–2002). In Fall 2021, the gallery will present two concurrent exhibitions of work by Rickey, beginning with a major offsite installation of nine monumental kinetic sculptures on Park Avenue, as part of an ongoing program presented by The Sculpture Committee of The Fund for Park Avenue and NYC Parks' Art in the Parks program. Concurrently, three large-scale works will be exhibited in the Kasmin Sculpture Garden, on view from The High Line at 28th Street. Together these exhibitions will constitute the largest show of monumental sculpture by Rickey since the artist’s retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1979.

Eric Gleason, Senior Director at Kasmin, says, "George Rickey is a singular entity in the history of 20th century sculpture, and his numerous innovations within the realm of kinetics helped to create and define a genre. Kasmin has a well-documented commitment to placing monumental sculpture in the public realm, and the gallery is thrilled to expand that programming to include Rickey's work, beginning with the installation along Park Avenue in the Fall of 2021."

"For the past twenty years the George Rickey Estate has brought Rickey's art to new audiences, exciting them with his timeless but playful kinetic sculptures that respond to the wind, light and natural forces surrounding them.  We feel fortunate to begin this new relationship with the Kasmin Gallery to exhibit and place Rickey's works in public places in New York and in spaces and collections around the world,” says Philip Rickey, Executor of the Estate. “The George Rickey Foundation has an esteemed partner in Kasmin to fulfill our global mission of advancing appreciation and understanding of the life and work of George Rickey. We look forward to a fruitful relationship,” comments Richard Benefield, Executive Director, George Rickey Foundation, Inc.

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Born in 1907 in South Bend, IN, George Rickey spent over five decades committed to the creation of poetic and precisely-calibrated sculptures that he referred to as his “useless machines.” Designed to be situated in the public sphere, the works are activated by their interplay with the surrounding environment, reshaping the landscape and bringing heightened attention to aspects of light, movement, and composition. Of all the natural forces, it was the wind’s movement that most captured Rickey’s imagination. He once wrote, “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.”

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