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Lot Essay
'Piet and Ida Sanders' relationship with my parents went back a long way and was very close. They discovered my father's work in 1964 after an exhibition in Milan at Galerie Schwartz, which they had read about. When they asked about George Rickey, Arturo Schwartz pulled out a shoebox with a work of his that he proceeded to put together. Piet and Ida were so thrilled with it that they bought it on the spot and got George and Edie's address.
The piece was installed in Schiedam and a letter of inquiry was written to my father. He responded quickly, and thus began a long and fruitful friendship, with many visits to Holland by my parents, and similar trips to East Chatham by Piet and Ida. Out of this relationship grew some of my father's most important and interesting commissions. It allowed him to create career changing works, both small and large scale, such as the monumental Two Vertical Three Horizontal Lines at the Kröller-Müller Museum, the large Two Rectangles Vertical Up in Rotterdam, and his indoor wall sculpture in the hall at Schipol Airport - and, finally, Piet and Ida's gift of George's Horizontal Column of Five Squares Excentric, now in the pond in Juliana Park in Schiedam.
I think that the relationship Piet and Ida had with my father exemplified the kind of fruitful friendships they fostered with many artists. My own experience, when they commissioned me to create a stone sculpture for their garden, exemplified their generosity and showed their support for artists of all generations.'
Philip Rickey
16 January 2013
The piece was installed in Schiedam and a letter of inquiry was written to my father. He responded quickly, and thus began a long and fruitful friendship, with many visits to Holland by my parents, and similar trips to East Chatham by Piet and Ida. Out of this relationship grew some of my father's most important and interesting commissions. It allowed him to create career changing works, both small and large scale, such as the monumental Two Vertical Three Horizontal Lines at the Kröller-Müller Museum, the large Two Rectangles Vertical Up in Rotterdam, and his indoor wall sculpture in the hall at Schipol Airport - and, finally, Piet and Ida's gift of George's Horizontal Column of Five Squares Excentric, now in the pond in Juliana Park in Schiedam.
I think that the relationship Piet and Ida had with my father exemplified the kind of fruitful friendships they fostered with many artists. My own experience, when they commissioned me to create a stone sculpture for their garden, exemplified their generosity and showed their support for artists of all generations.'
Philip Rickey
16 January 2013