George Rickey (1907-2002) was an American kinetic sculptor best remembered for what he called his "useless machines," a body of carefully crafted stainless steel sculptures whose graceful, precisely calibrated forms move with the wind at unpredictable intervals, drawing attention to the shifting effects of air, light, and the surrounding environment. Working with an engineer's understanding of balance and motion, Rickey helped establish kinetic sculpture as one of the most inventive branches of postwar American art.

Born in South Bend, Indiana, Rickey was the son of an engineer with a degree from MIT and the grandson of a clockmaker. Both his father and his grandfather encouraged the young Rickey's early interest in engineering and tinkering, which he largely set aside as a young man in order to pursue the study of art and work as a painter. His early career unfolded within the world of representational painting, and he trained in the great European art centers before eventually returning to the United States to build his mature career.

Rickey's turn to kinetic sculpture came relatively late in his life, following his military service during the Second World War. He served in the Army Air Corps as a maintenance and instruction officer, an experience that reawakened his engineering sensibility and gave him direct familiarity with the mechanical principles that would soon inform his sculpture. Beginning in the late 1940s and continuing through the following decades, Rickey developed the distinctive practice for which he is now celebrated, creating tall, slender blades of stainless steel that pivot on precisely engineered bearings and respond to even the slightest movement of air.

Rickey's sculptures often reach monumental scale, and his major public commissions have been installed in cities across the United States, Europe, and Japan. His work sits within the important international tradition of kinetic sculpture that also includes Alexander Calder, Jean Tinguely, and Naum Gabo, though Rickey's austere geometric vocabulary and his commitment to the natural energy of wind give his practice a distinctive character all its own. His sculptures are held in the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the Tate, and other major international collections, where they continue to shape the environments in which they are installed.