Diptych The Seasons (Hanging) (1956) belongs to Rickey’s early group of suspended mobiles, in which movement and colour conjure up shifting dynamic compositions in space. Rectangular polychrome planes are distributed across a delicately balanced stainless-steel armature, their overlapping configurations continually reorganised by currents of air. The work’s title is integral to its colour structure: in The Seasons, Rickey associated different palettes with the cycle of the year – yellows with spring and blues with winter – and conceived the sculpture to reveal contrasting seasonal groupings from different viewpoints. Here, natural change is therefore registered not through representation but through colour and movement: as the elements pivot and overlap, one chromatic constellation gives way to another, translating the passage between seasons into an unfolding spatial and temporal experience. The work also reflects Rickey’s continued dialogue with Josef Albers, whose investigations of shifting colour relationships offered an important precedent for Rickey’s developing conviction that movement itself could be treated as a visual element.

George Rickey (1907–2002) was one of the leading figures in twentieth-century kinetic sculpture. Born in South Bend, Indiana, and raised partly in Scotland, he first trained as a painter before turning to sculpture after the Second World War. From the 1950s onward, he became known for works made from carefully balanced metal elements that move in response to air, gravity and changes in the surrounding environment. His sculptures combine precise engineering with simple geometric forms and constant movement. Rickey exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, with major solo exhibitions at institutions including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Nationalgalerie, Berlin. His work is held in more than 150 museum collections 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; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; and Kunstmuseum Bern.