Executed in 1967, Two Lines Oblique Five Feet exemplifies George Rickey’s enduring investigation into the expressive possibilities of simple linear forms in motion. Two precisely balanced stainless-steel blades respond to the slightest movement of air, continually shifting their relationship to one another and tracing what Rickey described as a kind of “kinetic line drawing in space.” The significance of this composition within Rickey’s practice is underscored by its translation into monumental scale: a 25-foot-high version of Two Lines Oblique, dated 1967–69, is held in the permanent collection of the Stanley Museum of Art at the University of Iowa.The largest version of the oblique lines, Two Lines Oblique – Albany Mall, measures 50 feet in height. It was commissioned by the State of New York for the remodelled centre of the state capital and is currently in the collection of the New York state.

Rickey’s work has been the subject of major solo museum exhibitions throughout his career, including George Rickey: Sixteen Years of Kinetic Art at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1966); a major retrospective organised by the UCLA Art Galleries in 1971, which subsequently travelled to the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Denver Art Museum and San Francisco Museum of Art, among other institutions; presentations at the Nationalgalerie, Berlin (1973–74), Städel Museum, Frankfurt (1977), and Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal (1981); and a major retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1979. Today, Rickey’s work is represented in the permanent collections of more than 150 museums worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; and Kunstmuseum Bern.