George Rickey - Contemporary Art Day Sale New York Friday, November 16, 2012 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Kraushaar Gallery, New York
    Private Collection
    Jack Glenn Gallery, Costa Mesa, California
    Private Collection

  • Exhibited

    New York, Kraushaar Gallery, George Rickey: Kinetic Sculpture, October 4 - October 28, 1961
    Los Angeles, Stuart Primus, George Rickey, 1962
    New York, Maxwell Davidson Gallery, George Rickey
    Newport, Newport Harbor Art Museum, Collectors of Orange County

  • Literature

    Kraushaar Gallery, George Rickey: Kinetic Sculpture, exh. cat., New York, 1961, No. 5 (illustrated)
    N. Rosenthal, George Rickey, New York, 1977, p. 62
    M. Davidson, George Rickey: The Early Works, New York, 2004, p. 113 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    Intrigued by both the history of constructivist art and by the mobiles of Alexander Calder, George Rickey embarked on a vast career of creating kinetic sculptures with unique systems of motion, responsive to even the slightest variations in air current. Rickey perfected the development of sculpture crafted from a wide range of parts, moving in paths that change from simple oscillations to off-beat gyrations, spanning a variety of planes and volumes.

    The Sedge Themes, from which the present lot belongs, are one of the artist’s most beautiful and elegant evocations of the natural world. The blades sway back and forth in overlapping rhythms, emulating the delicate motions of the marsh grasses for which they are named after. Always vertical in orientation, the Sedges were also the first works in which Rickey implemented his reverse knife-edge bearing, and the commencement of incorporating blades as his signature style. These iconic blades in, Sedge
    Variation III
    , 1961, sprout from a roughly rectangular shape and become the artist’s principal tool in creating motion. The Sedges move as if part of nature and are among Rickey’s most fgurative works, true to natural events and the tall grasses they imitate.

204

Sedge Variation III

1961
stainless steel
overall: 57 x 32 1/2 x 14 1/2 in. (144.8 x 82.6 x 36.8 cm)
blades: 40-42 in. (101.6-106.7 cm)

Inscribed "Rickey 1961" at the base.
This work is unique.

Estimate
$100,000 - 150,000 

Sold for $122,500

Contemporary Art Day Sale

16 November 2012
New York